


The Potter County Ghost

by verulam (krynon)



Category: Borderlands, Tales from the Borderlands - Fandom
Genre: Agender Character, Altered Mental States, Coming of Age, Death, Disabled Character, Fate & Destiny, Gen, Ghosts, LGBTQ Character, M/M, Mental Health Issues, Mythology - Freeform, Porn With Plot but Mostly Plot, Power Dynamics
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-01-14
Updated: 2017-03-24
Packaged: 2018-05-13 07:14:29
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 19,315
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5699680
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/krynon/pseuds/verulam
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A ghost story, about a young boy who sees some things he shouldn't. </p><p>When Rhys is 11, he meets Arthur. It... sort of goes from there, and by the time he's 18, and meets Jack, he's already old hat at all of this stuff.</p><p>A story about growing up seeing things others don't. A story about a kid who gives away his life to a dead man. A story about fulfilling your destiny. And really, a story about not doing that at all.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Arthur (Queen of Pentacles)

**Author's Note:**

> The Potter County Ghost is a sort-of-southern-gothic au, featuring Rhys and at least two ghosts. Who knows what the fuck Jack is.
> 
> This is Un-Beta'd, please let me know if you spot anything off!

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “There’s a man in the kitchen.”  
> Rhys meets ghosts, loses friends, and has his first run-in with Destiny.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A re-write of Chapter One, now with more words, ghosts, and more ghosts!

This is how the story goes. 

At first, there’s a young child and a family. And then, there is only the child. And then, there is a child, not so young anymore, and three wise beings with tongues sharper than knives.

This is how the story goes.

 

***

 

Rhys is 11. The problem with that is that he’s very, very, _nearly_ 12\. But he’s _not_ 12\. He’s 11. Nobody will take him seriously and he’s not good enough at sport to impress the teacher. 

Otherwise, there’s a man in the kitchen.

The problem with _that_ is that his aunt isn’t in the house. And that the man in the kitchen is glowing. He’s also see-through, but Rhys puts that to the bottom of the “problem-list” for now.

The man in the kitchen looks at him sagely. “Hello,” he says. His voice is weird, tinny and odd and quirked down in places.

Walking in and leaving the door open, Rhys pads towards him, hand tapping at his side as he goes. “Hello,” he replies. He’d been kind of tempted to copy the man in the kitchen’s accent, but his aunt always taught him to be polite to guests. Which he supposes the man in the kitchen _is_. He’s not hurting anyone, as far as Rhys can see, so he’s not an intruder.

“Are you Rhys?” He asks, tapping his hands at the table. He’s wearing gloves, which was odd, because it was hot. Nobody wore gloves unless they were a farmer, and those gloves were big and white and stuck to people’s fingers.

“Um, yeah. I’m Rhys.”

“Hm.” The man seems to think about that, shutting his eyes and tapping his fingers rhythmically. It takes so long for him to sigh and open his eyes again that Rhys starts to worry that he should have offered him a drink or something, like his aunt always did with guests in the kitchen. “Well then, Rhys. I’m Arthur.”

He stands up out of the chair, and leans down. The light from the window shines through him, and Rhys can just make out his yard.

Rhys shakes hands with the man in the kitchen. “It’s nice to meet you, Mr. Arthur.”

Arthur smiles. “It’s nice to meet you too. Now, I think I might have some explaining to do.”

“Um,” says Rhys. “Why are you in my kitchen?”

Arthur smiles, sitting back in the chair. He gestures for Rhys to sit in the other chair, but drops his smile with the screech of wood on slate tiling. “I think that the simple answer to that is that I am in your kitchen because _you_ are in your kitchen.”

Rhys clicks his tongue. “O...kay,” He says slowly, because Arthur did answer his question, even if Rhys still doesn’t understand why he’s in the kitchen. He moves down the problem-list. “Okay then. Why are you glowing?”

Arthur raises his eyebrows. “That’s… actually to do with energy and the conversion of excess amounts of it into photons. I’ll explain it to you when you’re a little older.”

Rhys clicks his tongue again. This Arthur man was not very good at answering his questions. “Does my aunt know you’re here?”

Arthur smiles, which… is odd, because his eyes look very sad. “No,” he says. “No, she doesn’t.”

That, at least was an _answer._ “Why are you here then?”

Arthur starts tapping his fingers again, the dull sound of it thudding across the table. “I… I’m here because _you’re_ here. I’m going to be honest with you Rhys, I have _no_ idea why I’m here. I was… sent here.”

“You were _sent_ here? To… Glenville?”

“Yes.” He doesn’t look happy about it. Rhys doesn’t blame him.

“There’s nothing _in_ Glenville,” Rhys says. Which Arthur probably knows, he supposes, but still. There wasn’t anything in Glenville.

Arthur pauses in his tapping for a moment, before leaning back in his chair and crossing his legs. “ _You’re_ in Glenville.”

Well. That was _true,_ Rhys supposed, though not exactly what he’d meant. “I mean, I know there are _people_ in Glenville. But other than people and creepy houses, there’s _nothing_ in Glenville.”

There’s another pause because Arthur starts drumming his hands again, and Rhys grips at his shoulder with his hand. But Rhys still hasn’t gotten to the bottom of the problem-list.

“Why do you speak funny?”

Arthur laughs. “I’m from Britain. I was born in Bath.”

“You were… born where?!”

Arthur laughs again. “It’s a place, Rhys. Not _in_ a bath. I was born in southern England.”

“So you’re… like The Queen?” Rhys is grasping at straws. He… doesn’t know very many British people. He knows about some tennis players that his aunt liked, and _they_ were British, but they certainly didn’t sound like Arthur, the man in the kitchen.

Arthur smiles. It reaches his eyes this time. “In a manner of speaking, yes. I’m like the Queen.”

Rhys runs his teeth at his fingernails. “Um. Okay.” Rhys does wonder, though, why Arthur was in the kitchen. Or why anyone would want to _send_ Arthur to his kitchen. Probably a more important question was why Rhys could see next-doors cat prowling across the fence through Arthur’s shirt. “Why are you see-through?”

Arthur sighs, uncrossing his legs. Looking off to the side, he seems to fidget- he quickly looks back to Rhys though, and it’s quick enough that Rhys thinks he probably wasn’t thinking up a lie. “You aren’t going to like this,” Arthur warns. His eyes are very sad.

“It’s okay! I don’t like a lot of stuff people tell me.” He waggles his stump. “I don’t like it whenever it’s PE. They don’t let me play.”

Arthur almost smiles. “I think this might be a little worse than that, but that sounds horrible for you.”

Rhys nods. “But! Yeah, it’s- it’s cool for you to tell me! I’m fine.”

Arthur seems to think about that for a second, before leaning forward, bracing his elbows on his legs.“I’m dead,” he says.

Rhys blinks. “What?”

Arthur looks a little sympathetic. “I’m… I’m very, very dead.”

Rhys blinks a little more. “You’re dead?”

“Yeah.”

“You’re- Actually? Like you were buried?” He thinks of his parents in their graves and furrows his brows.

Arthur winces. “I was- actually, I was burnt.”

“And- and you came back?”

“Yes.”

“Do… do other people come back?”

Arthur looks at him with sad eyes. “Not… usually.”

Rhys sits back in his chair. The man in the kitchen seems… well. He still doesn’t seem _dead,_ that’s for certain.

Arthur coughs. “So, yes. That’s the gist of it, I think. I was sent to _your_ kitchen, specifically, because you were in it, and I’m dead. And…” He trails off, and finally sits back in his chair. “I’m afraid you’re probably going to meet more dead people soon.”

Rhys… Rhys starts thinking about the scary movies he shouldn’t have watched, and the old empty houses down the street, and the way people were always odd about telling the truth about dead people, as if they’d suddenly stand up and shout back-

“If it helps,” Arthur interrupts, “I’ll be with you.”

“I’m- no, that- are you going to leave before my aunt gets back?”

“I’m… I’m terribly sorry, Rhys, but I’m… not really allowed to leave.” He sounds sorry enough, but-

“ _What?!_ But my aunt’s coming home!!!”

“And she won’t be able to see me. I’m _dead_ , Rhys. I’m not a live person.”

Rhys stops his fidgeting. “Are you… an imaginary friend? I grew out of those.”

Arthur smiles. He doesn’t even seem to try, and it’s such a sad expression even upturning his lips makes him seem down. “I know you did, Rhys. I’m afraid you won’t be growing out of me, though.”

Rhys bites his lip.

Arthur sighs, dragging himself off of his chair, and dropping to his knees. “Rhys.”

“Yes,” he says, almost despite himself. His mind is racing, because if the man won’t go away, how will he go to _school?_

“Look, Rhys. I’m not here to make life harder for you. Nobody else will be able to see me, but I’ll try and make sure I’m out of sight, so you’re not distracted. Is that fair?”

“I’m-” Rhys blinks, and bites his lip so hard that it hurts. “I have to go to _school._ ”

“I can stand at the back,” Arthur says, firmly. “There’s certain things I can’t explain to you right now, but- For now, I promise you. I will try and make this as easy as possible, for you.”

Rhys covers one eye with his hand. “What do I tell my _aunt?_ ”

Arthur rests a hand on his shoulder. “Whatever you need to. If you want to tell her you have an imaginary friend, you can.”

“I’m _eleven._ I’m too old to have imaginary friends.”

Arthur laughs. “Yes, of course. Would you rather not tell her at all?”

“I-”

A car engine sputters. Arthur sighs as the door clicks and clacks.“I’ll admit it,” he mumbles, “That could have been _more_ convenient.” He looks seriously at Rhys before standing. “I’ll stay quiet. I’ll tell you anything else you need to know when you’re done talking.”

Nodding, Rhys releases his clenched fist and tries to even out his breathing.

“And Rhys-” Rhys glances at him as he leans on the wall. “I’m really very sorry about all of this.”

And then Rhys’ aunt is in the house, and that’s that for his conversation with the man in the kitchen.

 

***

 

His aunt is called Jennifer. She’s not _actually_ his aunt, but she’d been a good friend of his parents, and Rhys can barely imagine life without her. They didn’t look much alike though, and there were always questions, but Rhys usually got more about his arm, so it was okay. They were both angular, and Rhys was tall even for his age, but where he was paler than paper, her skin was dark brown. She was very pretty. He’d tried to braid his hair like her once, but it hadn’t gone well.

She also wore _amazing_ shoes. Rhys loves them, even though they look like they hurt her feet, and they always made it pretty clear when she was home. She’d pull into the drive, unlock the door, and wrench them off her feet. They clicked and they clacked and then they thudded to the floor.

She’s just outside the door- the sound of the car door, the ring of keys, and then the door opens. They click and they clack, and then they thud to the floor.

  
“Rhys?” His aunt calls. 

He takes a second to stare at Arthur, nipping at his lip, before yelling back. “Hey, Aunt Jen!”

She stumbles into the kitchen with her folders clutched in her hands, before letting her breathe out with an “Ooph”, and spreading them over the table. She smiles over at him. “How was school? Good?”

Rhys smiles widely at her. “Mr. Blake was super nice about how well I’m doing in Biology!”

In a swift, fluid movement, she stands and sweeps him into her arms. She wraps her arms around his shoulders, and he clutches at her back. “I’m very proud of you, baby.” When Rhys smiles back at her, his grin is so toothy and wide it hurts his cheeks a little. She puts a hand on his face. “And how was PE today? No problems?”

The smile he gives her then is quiet, almost. It hadn’t been a _problem_ exactly. “I-” he coughs. “I didn’t go.”

She purses her lips. “Why?”

“They wouldn’t let me play anyway. It was Baseball.” Even though he’s staring at the floor, she leans backwards out of the corner of his eye, unimpressed. After a second, though, her shoulders go slack, and he glances up. Her face only looks sympathetic, not _mad._

“Did you do something good with the time?”

He nods enthusiastically. “Me and Vaughn did the code-game thing! We beat the other team by _miles._ ” That was because the other team were Sasha and Fiona, and they _always_ let them win. They were in the year above, but they were very good friends- Sasha, especially.

“Mm-hmm? Well then, Rhys. I’m proud of you. Did you do any sports today?”

He purses his lips, and Aunt Jen laughs. When Arthur snorts in the background too, it’s everything he can do to not start upwards and stare- luckily, though, Aunt Jen plops her hands on his shoulders and squeezes him gently.

“It’s okay, baby. You’re trying!” Which was true. He _liked_ tennis, but he wasn’t very good at it. He _was_ good at gymnastics, but they wouldn’t let him do that either, unless it was firmly on the floor. “Look, how about I don’t nag you about the baseball, if you make sure to do something _important_ with your time?”

He nods again. So hard, he feels like his head might fall off. “Yeah! Yeah, Aunt Jen. That’d be… really good.”

“Good! Good.” She pats him on the head. “Okay, now you scoot and find something to do. I’ve got a whole lot of books to balance.”

“Okay, Aunt Jen.” And with that he’s evicted from the kitchen, Arthur trailing behind him.

 

***

 

Normally, the first order after leaving the kitchen would be homework, but Arthur is trailing his steps.

“Can I come in?” Arthur asks, pausing in the threshold to Rhys’ room. There’s a moment of curling embarrassment in his gut.

“As… long as you don’t mind messy rooms?”

Arthur laughs. “No, I’m fine with messy rooms. I’m sure I’ve seen worse.”

Still, Rhys hesitates in the doorway, peering his head around before opening it properly. It’s not too bad, at least not as bad as it could have been. Breathing a sigh of relief, he beckons Arthur into the room, before plopping heavily onto the bed.

“So,” he says.

“So,” agrees Arthur, easily. He doesn’t seem to bother to look around the room- all he does is lean easily against the dresser.

“Who are you?” Rhys asks. He’d been thinking about it on the stairs- He really should have asked that _first_.

Arthur smiles, drumming his fingers on his leg. It doesn’t make any sound, but whether it’s because he’s wearing gloves or _dead_ isn’t clear. “Well, I’m Arthur. When I was alive, I… was around a very long time.”

Rhys thinks about that for a moment, chewing on a nail. “So- I’m, I’m 11. How old are you?”

Arthur nods at him. “A lot older than that. I was born… Well over 1,500 years ago. I think. What’s the year?”

Rhys blinks. “It’s 2016. Um. Excuse me, you were born before _America?_ ”

Arthur smiles. “Yes. I hadn’t thought about it like that before.” He taps a finger to his lips. “I was actually born before Britain, I suppose. It was mostly just a lot of tribes, at the time.”

“That’s… very old.”

Arthur, for a man that had frown-lines, seemed to have a very smiley face. “Yes, I suppose it is, isn’t it? Just you wait until you meet Phemonoe, though.”

Rhys suddenly feels very, very small. “How old is…” He gives up before trying, but Arthur seems to get the gist.

“Phee-mon-oe,” he repeats, sounding it out. “And frankly, I’ve no idea. Older than anyone else, I should guess. But, anyway. More questions?”

He kind of wants to ask who exactly they are, but the problem-list is at hand, and he’s got more important things to ask.“You’re a ghost?”

“In a manner of speaking, yes.” 

Rhys coughs. “Is… that a yes or a no?”

“It’s a yes.” 

“Okay.” Says Rhys. Okay. There’s a ghost in his bedroom, and his name is Arthur, and he is older than probably anything that Rhys has ever seen. Okay. “Um. Why are you… in Glenville?” 

Arthur seems to pause, staring at the ground and sucking at his lip. “That’s a good question, and one I don’t know the answer to. Sorry.” He steeples his fingers, before setting them on his chest. “If it helps at all, I’m intervening with you for a very important reason. I’m just not sure why I’m here… now.” He gestures around at the room. “You’re quite young to be meeting dead people.” 

“I’m eleven!” Rhys retorts, indignantly.

Arthur looks at him sympathetically. “Most people don’t meet the dead until they die themselves.”

It’s not meant unkindly, he doesn’t think, but Rhys shuts up.

“Honestly, Rhys? I’m here because you’re a medium, and also a… You’re _probably_ a medium,” he corrects himself, “If not, then I’m just here to… I dunno. Hang out.”

Rhys squints. “If you didn’t even know what year it is, how come you said ‘hang out’? Old people don’t use young-people words.”

“I have a touch-screen phone, too.” Arthur laughs, walking over to sit on the bed next to him. Oddly, it doesn’t dip at his weight. “You’re a clever one, aren’t you?”

Rhys grins at him. “Really though. If you’re that old, what do you _do?”_

Arthur smiles, mouth quirking up on one side. “Right now? Or… before?”

Rhys pulls his legs up onto the bed, and turns to face him, resting his arm in his lap and settling. “Both.”

“Well,” he says, quietly. “I’ll probably end up telling you all of it at some point, but the gist is that before I was this,” He gestures to himself with one hand, “I was a witch. And before that I was a soldier, and before that I was a barman, and then a soldier again, and…” He pauses, drumming his fingers again. “And before that I was a King, actually.”

Rhys looks unimpressed. “You were a king?”

Arthur frowns at him. “Yes.”

“You don’t look very much like a king,” He mutters.

Arthur frowns again, even though his mouth is still smiling. It’s an odd combination. “And you don’t look like a medium.”

“That doesn’t make you a king.” Rhys points out. Honestly, Arthur didn’t look like a King at all. He was wearing a suit, for one, and Kings wore robes and things like that.

“No, but I can promise you that I’m on google.”

Rhys squints at him, before pulling his phone out of his pocket and tapping at it with his thumb. Sure enough, “King Arthur” pops up first. A man with long, brown hair, and a little beard-y thing. Arthur is blonde, no beard in sight.“This looks nothing like you.”

“Excuse me?!” He stares at the phone, and then sighs. “Okay, look, whatever. Any other questions?”

Rhys has to think about how to phrase it. He rolls it around in his head before speaking. “You said I’d see… other dead people.”

Arthur purses his lips. “...Yes. Probably. It’s- Yes.” Rhys stares at him, and he sighs again. “I can’t guarantee you’re a medium. Phemonoe seems to think that you are, at least, a medium. Jack _certainly_ seems to think you are. But I can’t guarantee it. And I can’t guarantee that if you are…” He trails off, staring into space, before tapping his fingers again.

“Look, Rhys. I can’t guarantee anything; whether you’re a medium or not. But I’m obliged to tell you. I can’t guarantee that if you _are_ a medium, you’ll even see the people you’re meant to. It just happens to be that people with the disposition to seeing ghosts also have predispositions to… other things.

And... I can’t guarantee that you won’t start seeing… other things, as well.”

 

***

 

Walking to school with Arthur strung along behind him is… _odd._ He wears odd clothes, and his shoes don’t tap on the sidewalk. 

History is odd, too. Arthur scoffs a lot when they do world history. It’s probably because he _fought_ in the wars they’re learning about from hundreds of years ago. They don’t ever spend a long time learning about it, but Arthur always comes out of those lessons with a sour look on his face.

He also refuses to help him in English, which is _so_ unfair. What he _does_ do, though, is listen intently as Rhys shows him how Scratch works, and how he could code little things. He asked the wrong questions sometimes, but it was okay. Arthur was old, he didn’t need to know the difference between HTML and Javascript.

  Even though Arthur could be kind of mean, it was… good that he was there.  He sat next to Aunt Jen when Rhys played tennis. He cheered with her.

 They walk back home afterwards, sometimes. Most of the time Aunt Jen drives them back, but sometimes she was busy. She was getting more and more busy, recently- as an accountant, she was getting pretty popular, as far as Rhys knew. She was good with numbers.

 Walking past creepy houses is no less scary when he’s tailed by an actual ghost.

 

***

 

Rhys finishes his dinner, and washes up the plates. Arthur dances badly to a song on the radio, and Rhys can barely restrain his giggles.

 “Are you always gonna be here, Arthur?”

 Arthur stops dancing. “Sorry?”

 Rhys puts a plate on the drainer and cranes his head around his shoulder. “Are you always gonna be here?”

 Arthur thins his lips, and leans up against the counter-top. “Probably.”

 "Probably?”

 Arthur squares his stance. “Definitely,” he corrects himself.

 He doesn’t seem convinced though. Rhys bites at his lip, and goes back to washing the dishes.

 

***

 

Rhys is 13.

“Where do you even get your clothes?” Rhys is lying on his bed, staring at the ceiling. When all he gets from Arthur is a muffled “Hmm?” from behind his hand, Rhys turns to look at him. “I’m serious here. Are there suit-shops for ghosts?”

Arthur swings around in the chair, shutting the lid of the laptop. “Are you seriously asking that? Don’t you have a test tomorrow?”

 Rhys rolls over so he’s actually facing the book on his bed. “Really though, where do you get your suits?”

 Arthur crosses his arms at him. He looks faintly unimpressed, but Rhys isn’t sure Arthur ever _doesn’t_ look like that. He only had two modes; happy or vaguely unimpressed. “Why do you change your clothes, Rhys?”

 “Dude,” Rhys snorts. “Because old clothes are gross.”

 “You know I don’t sweat? Or eat? Or do anything that would make a suit gross?”

 There’s a small silence while he mulls that over, before once again Rhys wrinkles his nose in disgust. “Have you been wearing that suit for _three years?_ ”

 “Yes,” says Arthur, turning back to his screen. “Get back to work.”

 “You know that for a ghost, you’re super boring, right?” 

“Yes.” says Arthur. “Get back to work.”

 

***

 “Tell me about being a

“Tell me about being a King.” Rhys asks.

Arthur looks up at him from over his newspaper. Rhys has no idea where he’s _getting_ them, but they aren’t in a language he can read, and he never sees them in the trash, so he thinks it’s fair to just leave the newspapers as a problem for another time.

After a few seconds pause, Arthur uncrosses his legs and makes a show of folding his paper, raising his eyebrows with a smirk when he catches Rhys watching.

“How come you fold it the same every time?” The paper is in the same neat rectangle as it always was.

 “I like routine,” comes the easy reply.

 Well. Rhys supposed that was fair enough.

 “Which bit of being king would you like to hear about?”

 Rhys flops his head onto his pillow.

 “What were the best bits?”

 Arthur laughs. “Well, I think there’s something to be said for fighting.”

 “I thought you were a pacifist?”

 “Shush. I don’t mean war, I mean sparring. War’s a nasty business. It’s more the adrenaline, I think. Sword on sword, metal on metal.”

 “That sounds… dangerous. And really cool. Was it like fencing?”

 Arthur laughs. “It most certainly was dangerous. Not quite like fencing though. The swords we used packed a little more…” Arthur smiles grimly. “Punch. But in those days, you died young. It was fair, I think, to swing first, and ask questions later.”

 “Did you… kill anyone?”

 Arthur’s smile dies, a little. “Yes. It was a part of my job, really. I was meant to be defending the land from Saxons.”

 “Did you regret it?”

 “You know, I’d say you were too young for this conversation, if not the fact that you’re talking to me right now.” Arthur sighs. “Some of them. Most of them, actually. At various times I have killed a great many people on various whims, and certainly none of those felt good.”

 “Huh,” Rhys says, staring at the ceiling. “Which wars did you serve in?”

 “A good many,” says Arthur. “My great-grandfather was a Roman soldier, so the fight was in the blood.”

 “...Does it work like that?” As far as he knew, Aunt Jen’s boyfriend had been a soldier. She didn’t talk about it much, but if it actually ran in families, it might explain why she was so good at her job. She described it as a battle often enough.

 Arthur laughs, again. “Not really. Sometimes I think it’s easier to justify my age if I say I inherited it.” He shakes his head. “To be honest with you, Rhys, I made a great many decisions that I should not have made more than once, and then did anyway.’

 “...Will you teach me to fight?”

 Arthur sighs deep in his throat. “I could,” he admits. “But honestly, Rhys. I don’t think it would sit right with my soul.”

 A long silence. Rhys turns over the thought in his head.

 “You have a soul? I thought you were dead.”

 Arthur laughs again, just once. “I should hope so. If not, I’ve rather outstayed my welcome on earth, don’t you think?”

 

***

 

Rhys is 14, walking home from school, and sulking.

 “I’m not kidding, Arthur, they hate me. They think I’m some joke. I only had that prosthetic like, 2 days. What’s Aunt Jen gonna say?”

 Arthur sighs. His light steps seem worlds away from Rhys’, the way he’s stamping on the floor. “She’s probably going to want to go to the school, I think.”

 “No!” Rhys yowls. God, it didn’t bear thinking about. Aunt Jen was a force of nature when she wanted to be, and it was probably best she was kept as far from his academic life as possible. “No, no, _no!_ ”

 “If it helps at all, I think the marker will come off with some nail polish remover.”

 “That’s not the point!!!”

 “I know,” Arthur soothes. It’s odd, because all it seems to make him want to do is _break_ things. Arthur was so _distant,_ and it was infuriating.

 “No, you _don’t!_ You’ve got both of your _arms,_ you _dick!_ ”

 Arthur sighs again. “Listen, Rhys, I’m with you nearly all of the time. Jen might buy it, but I know it’s my fault-”

 “Yeah, it _is_ your _damn fault!”_

 Rhys is- God, he’s _so_ angry. And he _knows_ there’s people worse off than him, living in a silver spoon neighbourhood of a rich place where nobody knows what poverty is, but. _God._ God, he wished he’d stop seeing things.

 Not Arthur, really, because it was- It was _Arthur._ Arthur was… well. Arthur was quiet, usually, Rhys’d just- he’d slipped. And now all of the stuff about “imaginary friends”, which-

 Rhys isn’t sure if it’d be better if the bullies knew the _truth._

 “God, Arthur, I _hate_ them _._ ”

 And now he’d have to go home to Aunt Jen with horrible stuff scrawled on his arm.

 “I know,” says Arthur, and it’s more believable this time. “I know.”

 

***

 

Aunt Jen helps him clean the prosthetic. Arthur was right, and she rubs at the marker with the cotton balls they keep over the sink. 

“Do you want me to-?”

“No,” Rhys shakes his head. “No.”

“What about if it was just to inform the school? Not to make them do anything?”

“ _No._ ” Rhys shakes his head firmly. “No, please don’t.”

And if she pays any notice of the fact that the graffiti on the arm talks about imaginary friends and freaks, then she doesn’t mention it.

 

***

 

“You’d be a good dad,” he informs Arthur. Rhys is ill, hair sweaty at his forehead.He was already out of the worst of it, chills subsiding, but Arthur keeps rubbing his back anyway. His insides felt _horrible,_ gnawing and gross, and it was admittedly comforting to have Arthur with him.

Arthur makes a soft sound from behind him. “I’m glad you think so.”

“Do you think you’d be a good dad?”

Another soft sound, and the hand rubbing circles in his back squeezes at his shoulder. “I’m sure I couldn’t say."

“I’m glad you’re here.” Rhys says to him, mumbling. He’s already looking forward to Aunt Jen bringing back his hot water bottle, and she’d only left to refill it a few minutes ago. “Even though you’re dead.”

Arthur smiles. “Thank you, Rhys. I’m glad you’re here, too.”

 

***

 

Rhys is getting _better_ at tennis. Not, like, _good._ But better. He plays twice a week, every week.

Aunt Jen encourages him, a lot. Arthur does too, but not in the same way; Rhys thinks that maybe Arthur just liked _sports._ Aunt Jen seems to be doing it to make him socialise. He’d rankle at the thought, but all Aunt Jen had actually done was buy him a new racket, promised him a trip to buy some new video games if he made sure to go to his practice.

They still won’t let him play baseball, but at this point Rhys thinks it’s more to do with the fact that he wouldn’t play even if they _asked_ him to, now. Besides, he’s better at tennis, these days.

 

***

 

Rhys, if he were an animal, imagined his ears would perk up. “Holy crap, I didn’t know our doorbell was so loud.” 

Arthur stares at him. “What? I didn’t hear it.”

Rhys frowns. “It was pretty loud,” he says, standing from his seat.

“No,” says Arthur, “It wasn’t.”

When Rhys goes to check, there’s no-one at the door.

It happens many, many more times before he realises that there’s _never_ anyone at the door. Rhys files it into the same part of his mind that he puts the shadows.

 

***

 

The prosthetic gets ruined again.

“Rhys…” Aunt Jen starts, but Rhys makes a small noise at her.

“Thank you for cleaning my arm, Aunt Jen.”

She makes a soft sound. “Do you wanna talk about it?”

Rhys makes another noise, this time one that makes it pretty clear just how close he is to crying.

“I’m a _teenager._ Teenagers don’t cry!”

Aunt Jen pulls him into her arms, holding him tight.

“It’s okay, baby. It’s okay.”

He doesn’t tell her everything. He tells her that sometimes he thinks shadows move, so he gets too scared to look. He tells her that because he doesn’t have any friends, he sometimes hums songs to himself.

Aunt Jen sighs. “But you did have friends, didn’t you?”

Rhys makes a choked noise. “Yeah, I did.”

Aunt Jen holds him close. “It’s okay, baby. I’m so, so proud of you.” She kisses the top of his head. “I’m so glad you’re here.”

 

 

***

 

Sasha and Fiona leave. Their parents were moving to the big city. They made all of these plans about how they’d stay behind if their parents left.

But after all, they’re only 14.

Vaughn was still his friend. But Vaughn was busy. Vaughn had other friends.

Vaughn had other friends that couldn’t stop staring at his arm, as if they knew what had been written on it.

But, after all, they’re only 14.

They’re just kids, Rhys reminds himself. Just kids.

 

(For some reason, it doesn’t occur to him that _he’s_ only 14, too.)

 

***

 

Rhys wins a inter-state match of tennis. He doesn’t go far in the tournament, but he beats someone 2 years older than him, in a match that he wins by _miles._ He almost cries, and clutches at the back of Arthur’s shirt, sniffing desperately. 

“Well done!” Aunt Jen clings to one side, and Arthur to the other. “I’m so proud of you baby, I’m so proud!”

Not for the first time, Rhys really wishes that Arthur and Aunt Jen could meet.

 

***

 

Rhys is 15. He sees shadows enough to stop mentioning it, now, and it’s then that he meets his first dead person. Other than Arthur, of course, but Rhys isn’t sure that Arthur even _counts_. 

“Hello,” he says. They’re in a dark alley, because it was the holidays, and there was nowhere to shop in Glenville. You had to go to the city if you needed anything, and there happened to be a high concentration of dark alleys in big cities. Apparently there tended to be more ghosts, too.

The ghost turns to look at him. Half of their hair is braided back, same as Aunt Jen’s always was, but the other half hung forward in thick locks. They look… angular. Sharp and fashionable, and… not very dead.

 It’s odd; he keeps expecting that they’ll look more like corpses than ghosts, but he’s never met anyone that didn’t look as pristine as Arthur.

 “Hello,” They say. “Who are you?”

 “My name is Rhys,” he says, because it seemed like the right thing to do. “Um. How can I help you?” For all Arthur liked to talk about supernatural stuff, he’d- always seemed to gloss over exactly what he was meant to do, as a medium. But, helping people seemed like a good start.

 “You’re the medium?” They smile faintly, ignoring his question. Which was pretty rude, even if he hadn’t started the conversation like he’d meant to. It was hardly his fault, after all, he’d never done it before. Her gaze swings around to wear Arthur stands, leant up against a brick wall. “Mm. I’m Yvette. Who’s your friend?”

 “He’s Arthur.” Rhys glances behind him in time to see Arthur raise a hand before he goes back to tapping at his phone.

 Yvette raises her eyebrows, before squinting at him. “Which Arthur? Anyone famous?”

 Rhys groans. “ _All_ of them, apparently. And, look, I’m really sorry, I don’t mean to be rude, but- It’s very cold, today, and I’ve not done this before. Could you… Help me out a little?”

 Yvette’s eyebrows go further up her face. “You want _me_ to help _you_ out?”

 Rhys squares his stance a little bit. “Well, Yes. That’s what _he_ does,” He mumbles, gesturing quickly over his shoulder. When Arthur snorts quietly, Rhys hopes Arthur develops telepathy just in time for him to hear Rhys telling him to fuck off.

 “Yeah, kid, I know.” Yvette leans back, arms crossed. “That’s not my job. My job is to give _you_ a job. I need to to deliver this-” she strides over the distance between them, heels clacking. Rhys tries to ignore the moving shadows that swirl from where she was standing, “To my family.” She shrugs. “My girlfriend, mainly. It’s her address.”

 Yvette pushes a piece of paper into Rhys’ shaking hands. It’s freezing.

 “Could- Could you not have done this yourself? It’s so _cold_.”

Yvette scowls at him. “No. That’s the point, kid. That’s your _job._ How old are you, anyway?

Rhys scowls right back at her. “I’m 15.”

“Uh-huh,” she says, before checking her watch. “Now, I don’t want to hurry you, but I really want to hurry you. As you so astutely observed, it’s freezing out here. I’d like to move on ASAP, thank you.”

As Rhys walks back out of the alleyway, with Arthur in tow, he shoves his hand in his pockets and scowls.

“Geeze. She was a bundle of laughs, huh?”

Arthur looks at him mildly, though Rhys has known him long enough that he was definitely laughing inside. “She’s dead.”

“Yes, that’s the point.” Rhys mutters, pulling the letter out of the front of his hoodie and glancing at it.“It’s a good thing her girlfriend lives in the city, right?”

Arthur stares at him. “Yes. It is, rather.”

 

***

 

Knocking on the door of a woman he’s never met is… weird. Very weird.He pulls his hood close over his face, and physically hands it to the woman at the door. She’s tall, tan, black hair bobbed tight. He gives it to her gently, careful not to touch her fingers with his when it changes hands.

“I was asked to give this to you.”

She peers at the handwriting closely, and- “God, this is- How did you get this?!” Her eyes are filled with tears and Rhys feels himself go still as stone.

“I’m so sorry for your loss. She… seemed like a good person.”

The woman rips her gaze from the letter and brandishes it, other arm curled into her chest. “Is this some kind of _joke?!_ ”

“Honestly. I’m so sorry for your loss.”

And then he turns on his heels and walks away, Arthur trailing behind him.

 

***

 

“Is that all it is?” Rhys has his knees pulled close up into his chest, and there’s nobody else on the train. He whispers anyway.“Giving people letters, things like that?”

Arthur puts a reassuring arm on his shoulder, sighing. “Sometimes. Other times they’ll want to… speak with them directly. Other times they won’t… really want anything at all.”

Rhys bites at his lip. “Like you?”

Arthur sighs again, deeper. It rings in his chest. “In… a manner of speaking.”

“Are there… many more?” Arthur glances at him pensively. Rhys mumbles, “Like you, I mean?”

Arthur’s eyes widen a little, before scrunching up tight. “Oh, fucking hell. I’m going to need to take you to see Phemonoe, aren’t I?”

They sit in silence for a little bit, before Arthur nudges Rhys violently with his foot. “Just _ask_ me already, Rhys.”

Rhys coughs.

“Phemonoe,” Arthur says, rubbing the material of his tie between his fingers, “Was the Oracle of Delphi. And Libya. And every other place, they’re probably the Oracle of that, too. They’re… they can be difficult.”

“How difficult?” Rhys mumbles. God, he’d only just met his first proper ghost, and now he’s going to meet an _Oracle?_

Arthur eyes him. “I’m not going to dignify that with a response.”

 

***

 

School, after that,is _infinitely_ tiring. He scrawls his answers and barely takes notice of the board in front of him.It probably had something to do with the fact that ghosts are _everywhere,_ now, some fully corporeal like Arthur, others wispy and thin.

They don’t try and speak to him, really. They don’t ask him to do things, like Yvette had. They’re just… there. Sometimes they try and speak to people- mostly teachers, but some kids.

Some of them don’t seem to realise they’re dead.

It makes Rhys’ heart hurt.

 

***

 

He’s tossing and turning, late at night, when he ends up staring at the ceiling. He’s gotten used to sleeping with the slight glow that’s Arthur, perched as always on the desk-chair, and tapping as always on his cell.

Rhys doesn’t say anything, but Arthur seems to hear him anyway.

“We don’t have to see Phemonoe straight-away,” mumbles Arthur.

“What’s so bad about them, anyway?” Rhys asks, turning his head but keeping the rest of his body firmly cocooned in sheets. “I thought they were an Oracle, aren’t they meant to help people?”

Arthur sighs, and eyes him. “Yes, that’s the principle of it. They…” He coughs to himself.

A small silence, where the wind outside whistles a little. “They…?” Rhys prompts, tapping at his bed with his fingers.

Arthur seems to hold his breath. “They’re the reason I’m here, really. They see futures.”

Rhys bites at his lip, and prods at it with his tongue. “Did they… see mine?”

Arthur sighs. “In… a manner of speaking.”

Rhys stares at the ceiling. “So they did, then.”

“Listen, Rhys, I-” he clears his throat. “I chose to become… involved, in your case, because you’re of great interest to a great many people, and not all of them are particularly… kind.”

“...Who?” Rhys asks, tapping harder at the bed.

“Well,” Arthur says, leaving his seat and coming to sit on the end of his bed. “Phemonoe, for one. And a few others.” His brows are furrowed. “There’s a couple… that I’d rather you not meet. Jack, for one.” He says, muttering. “He’s… already a foregone conclusion, I’m afraid.”

Rhys nudges him with his foot, “What does he want with me?”

Patting him on the leg, Arthur looks faintly troubled, but infinitely sympathetic. “I wish I knew, Rhys. He’s a law unto himself, that one.”

Another silence. Rhys stares at the ceiling. “What does Phemonoe want with me?”

“Nothing, for now.” He leans back. “I’m… meant to tell them, though. That you’ve met your first ghost. And… Other things, but I think we should leave that for _them_ to figure out.”

“What _will_ they want from me?” Rhys presses, feeling his leg jiggle back and forth.

Arthur stands and sighs. For a man that didn’t really breathe, he certainly did sigh a lot. Rhys… gets the feeling it’s because Arthur really was kind of _sad_. “Any number of things, I’m afraid. Probably, though, they’ll want to confirm their prophecy, and your destiny. They’re to check on any being that’s meant to become a medium.”

“They’re in charge of my _destiny?”_ If _‘destiny’_ meant seeing shadows that even _Arthur_ couldn’t see, meant… any _number_ of things, he didn’t want to do it. He just wanted to feel _okay._ Destiny was for people with _big_ dreams. All _he_ wanted was to grow up, maybe get a degree, get a job in coding.

Rhys lets the silence fall and bites at his lips.

“Rhys…we can wait.”

“Yeah,” mumbles Rhys.

“Okay, Rhys. We’ll wait.”

 

***

 

Weeks pass. Rhys delivers some more letters, speaks to some people, and speaks to some dead people too.

The shadows don’t quiet, and he’s more and more afraid that this… Oracle person, is going to tell him it’s _Destiny._ A quick google tells him all he needs to know about Oracles: prophetic visions, seers that saw things and sometimes spoke in languages they didn’t know. None of it sounds as much like destiny as… Well. Difficult.

And there’d been a time when that’d be- Rhys would have thought, okay. He’d have said, okay, but I still get a cool _destiny,_ don’t I?

When Rhys was young, he used to watch TV, and wonder why the kids with powers wanted to be normal. He stands by that, still, because- they weren’t like him.

There was a difference between being super-strong, or really fast, or being able to change shape, and… Rhys. Rhys couldn’t do those things. Rhys could see things that weren’t there, and sometimes he felt like he was as vague as the shadows he saw.

He wanted to help people.

He didn’t want _this._

 

***

 

“I shan’t let them _have_ him.” For someone that seemed to eternally tap at their cell, it wasn’t often Rhys heard Arthur have a phone-call.

It was even less often that he should have an _angry_ phone-call.

“Look, Jean, I know exactly what they want with him. I’m not an idiot, I’ve been there.” Arthur seems to reason with the person on the other end of the phone.

Rhys stays hovering in the doorway to the living room.

“ _Yes!_ It _does_ matter. He’s _fifteen._ ”

Rhys leans up against the doorway, head bowed. The light of Arthur’s spectre glows and flares like flames. “Yes! For fuck’s sake, if he’s old enough to meet _them_ , he’s old enough to choose what he wants!”

Arthur glances up at him, looks faintly sad for a moment, then goes back to snarling at the screen. “ _Jean._ I _won’t_ let them have him. Not if he doesn’t want to go. Isn’t being a medium _enough?”_

Rhys wishes he could hear the other side of the conversation. Arthur flares. Rhys feels the hair on the back of his neck stand, despite himself. “It doesn’t matter! _We only need the one,_ and Phemonoe is already _doing_ it.”

 “...”

 “No. He’s _fifteen._ I will not let you have him. And I won’t let them have him either.”

 “...”

 “I intervened for a _reason, Jean, why let me go if-?!”_ The light on his back licks at the ceiling. “Do you want fucking _Jack_ to have him?!”

 Quietly, from the edge of the room and out of the corner of his mouth, he says: “Nobody _owns_ me, Arthur.”

 Arthur stares at him. “Jean,” he says, to the screen, still looking at Rhys with eyes that seem very old, “If it kills me, I won’t _sell_ him to them. Or to _Jack_.”

 Something said makes him blink and startle, mouth peeling back in a snarl. For a second, the roof is on fire.

 “You _can’t-!”_ Then he stares at the screen, and blinks.

 “She…” Arthur looks at Rhys, and the flames go out, and suddenly his stance collapses against the wall. “She hung up on me.”

 It takes Rhys to pad slowly across the room, muscles shaking, for Arthur to pull himself back up, and launch himself into Rhys’ arms.

 After a few seconds, he steps back and shakes himself out. Smoothing the suit down his front, Arthur looks thoroughly unsettled.

 “I’m… afraid that we’re going to need to contact Phemonoe. Today, probably.”

 “ _Now?_ ” Rhys asks. He- He’d guess what the conversation had been about, but, it- _today?_

 “My….” Arthur stares at the ground. When he looks back up his face is set grimly and harsh. “My hands are tied. It has to be soon.”

 Rhys blinks.

 “Aunt Jen’s home in a few hours.” Arthur coughs. “No time like the present.”

 “Wh-” Rhys stutters. “ _What?!”_

 Arthur coughs again, and pulls down his suit by the lapels. His mouth is set in a grim, long line. “No time like the present.”

 

***

 

When Phemonoe appears in the kitchen, they do not appear happy. They take one glance at Rhys before whirling to glare at Arthur.

“This is the state that you bring him in? You gave no word of ill-safety.”

Arthur clutches at the bridge of his nose with his fingers. “In my defence-”

“Child, I care not for the reasons you fail. Failure does not reflect our creed.” Phemonoe interrupts him. Arthur falls silent, scowling.

Their voice- it sounds absent, spoken through a speaker, a distant noise. Rhys can’t really bear to look at them, and the sight of them makes dark things flash in the corner of his vision.

“Oh, my child… Lost on the way to your Sight. You poor, poor, broken thing…” Phemonoe bends over, swooping forward to cup his cheek.

Rhys can barely _see_. What he can make out through what now appears to be a screen of static is blue, robes flowing down from a hood that Rhys does _not_ want to see under.

“Br- Sorry!?” The ‘broken’ comment catches him through a wave of static. “I’m not _broken._ ”

Phemonoe shushes him, humming under the blanket of static. “Child, I know. But… you are not well. and I was told Arthur had you at heart.”

Silence falls, and Rhys falls backwards a little. It’s like- weight, all around him and _in_ him, really, blinking and flashing.

“He’s a seer, isn’t he?” Mumbles Arthur, from what sounds like miles away. Rhys feels his eyes unfocus.

Phemonoe laughs. “Seer? Not quite. He is an _Oracle._ ”

Arthur splutters, tinny, shrieking. It’s lost in smoke.

Phemonoe swoops back in towards him.

“How much is Other-Sight? Have you, child, Seen other places?”

It feels like there’s void roaring within him.

“It’s hurting him-” Arthur’s voice is a quiet crumbling pillar, and shadows are screaming.

“ _Quiet,_ ” Phemonoe hisses.

“At least let me-” Arthur-

“I said, _quiet.”_

Phemonoe’s hand lies on his head and he feels himself burst into flames.

“Oh, child,” They say, and it aches, burns.

“A miracle you still live now...” They say, and it twists around, snakes and beasts, wyrms that Arthur mentioned, dragons and talons-

Phemonoe tuts. “You are a sad little thing, aren’t you?”

Rhys’ eyes open and he snarls.

Phemonoe sighs.

Rhys’ mouth rips open and he’s speaking, there are words, and _God,_ he feels like _stars._

A whipcrack.

“ _Re-bell-ion will serve you nothing-_ ”

Silence.

 

***

 

Arthur cradles his head gently, kneeling next to him.When Rhys opens his eyes, there’s blonde hair on his face. He never did ask how corporality worked, or why Yvette couldn’t give her letter away, but Arthur could grasp at his shoulders.

Arthur is humming some song, under his breath in words Rhys doesn’t know.

Arthur must notice an uptick in his breathing or something, because in a beat Arthur has glanced at his face and then gone back to clutching at him, ever tighter.

“Thank _fuck,_ I…” Arthur’s hands are in his hair. “It’s okay. They’re gone. Phemonoe’s gone.”

Rhys has time to agree, and parrot “thank fuck” back at him, before his head spins and he flops into Arthur’s grasp.

 

***

 

“Your aunt thought you had a fit. Called the ambulance, you were in hospital...You were awake, before. Aunt Jen thought you’d be more comfortable here.”

Rhys blinks at him, owlishly.

When they talk about it, Rhys can’t help but feel like he’s done something wrong. He doesn’t mention that the things happening to him seem more like symptoms than gifts. He does mention the shadows though.

“My brain sometimes feels like tire-squeal,” he mumbles into a pillow, and clutches at Arthur’s arm. “I see shadows that aren’t there.”

Arthur doesn’t seemed shocked, or scared. He doesn’t try and say it’s his destiny. What Arthur says, hugging Rhys tight, is that if he needs help, he can have it.

Rhys says, but what about Phemonoe? Arthur says they can go fuck themselves.

Destiny, Arthur says, through gritted teeth, can go fuck itself.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You can find me here!


	2. Jean (The Emperor (Reversed))

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rhys meets Jean in unfortunate circumstances and then gets some text messages. 
> 
> " He is exactly 17 years old- to the hour- when he gets the next text.
> 
> “Tired of waiting >:( come to Jack’s club in city- or Jack will come 2 U” "

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey! So it's been... a while. If you're reading this just after I post it, I suggest you reread the previous chapter! It sure has been a long time.
> 
> Anyway, warnings for this chapter include: implied hallucinations, and pretty much more of the same that was in the previous chapter.

“Do you want to talk about it?” Arthur asks, quietly. Rhys would want to roll his eyes if the thought of discussing it didn't make him shiver. Arthur had asked him if he wanted to talk so many times since Phemonoe's visit, and he'd only said yes to the first one. There was plenty to talk about, probably, but none of it made for polite conversation, and definitely none of it made for easy conversation.

“No,” he mumbles, pouring milk into his hot chocolate. In the living room, aunt Jen is sitting with her own mug.

It never stops being weird that Arthur can't have one with them.

Rhys glances up at him, trying to hold back the sigh in his chest. Arthur’s grimly sympathetic, arms folded and perched on the side.

“Too much?” He asks.

“Yeah,” Rhys croaks. He thinks of fire on his face and Arthur's voice tumbling down. “Yeah.”

***

 

It all happens just like that.

He goes to bed like normal, joking with Arthur tiredly as he goes, and he goes to sleep like normal, trying to still the jiggling of his legs as he feels the void gnawing on his back.

“It's okay,” Arthur says, like normal. “Go back to sleep, Rhys. You’re fine.” So Rhys does, just like normal.

He wakes up at 4 am, and there's no glowing spectre. And that's not like normal at all.

***

He pretends that it’s not happening, but Arthur’s never been away longer than a day before. Before long, two days stretch to three days stretch to five.

The ghosts he meets on the way home from school hang on the thresholds of derelict houses, and they sneer at him. When he asks them what they want, they speak in languages that Rhys doesn’t understand.

***  
One week later, at exactly midnight on a Thursday, Rhys sings happy birthday to himself.

For the first time since he was eleven, he does so alone.

***

He doesn't assume Arthur's gone. After all, how can he? Arthur was already dead.

***

Exactly 6 months later, Rhys is 16, and there's a woman in the kitchen. This time, Rhys knows exactly which questions he wants to ask.

“You're a ghost.” It's not a question. But the woman in the kitchen nods, and suddenly there's rage in his blood so strong it's hard to think.

“Where's Arthur?” He all but snarls it, and kind of wishes there was flames on his back like Arthur always had.

The woman in the kitchen blinks, slowly. She smells like a hospital, acrid and clean-sharp sanitizer. “He is with the Oracle.” Every inch of her is measured, from her faded jeans to her turtleneck sweater. She perches delicately, relaxed but straight-backed. “Good evening, Rhys.”

Rhys stalls in his warpath. Ghosts, these days, weren’t usually polite. “Good… Evening, Uh,”

“Jean,” she supplies, helpfully. “My name is Jean.”

Rhys’ mouth twists down in recollection. “You're the one he texted all the time. He called you.”

He'd gone over that conversation in his head so many times. Fucking Jean.

Jean gives him a tight smile. “Yes, that would be me. Though…” She examines her nails. They are pale pink and sharp. “It wasn't just me he liked to contact, for what it's worth. Your… ‘friend’ had many connections in high places.”

Rhys glares at her. It’s the most he can do, for now, to glare. “Is he okay?”

She laughs, and puts on a fake British accent with a saccharine smirk: “‘In a manner of speaking,’” She mimics, “He’s probably fine. Arthur’s a big boy.”

He squares his shoulders, and taps his fingers on his side. “Why are you here?”

“Well,” she says, rolling it from one side of her mouth to the other. “Mostly I'm here because you're here,” and it comes out of the corner of her mouth with a snide smirk and a forced drum of her fingers on the table.

“If you're trying to win me over,” Rhys grinds out, “You're doing kind of a shitty job at it.”

She laughs. It grates on his ears. “Gods no, I'm hardly trying to win your favour. No, I'm here to tell you the facts. I'll admit, the Oracle had some interest in me acting at Arthur’s replacement, but I knew it was a foregone conclusion.”

“Oh yeah?” Rhys does his best to stop scowling. It probably doesn't help that she's sitting in the same place Arthur always did.

“Essentially. Arthur and I do not necessarily see eye-to-eye on… Anything.”

“Can you be more specific?” Rhys pulls out the chair next to her, and is pleased to see her wince at the noise it makes.

“Certainly. In fact, it's time for those… Facts, I mentioned. You, as a young medium turned Oracle, have essentially got two paths.”

“I'm not an Oracle,” Rhys retorts.

“Well, apparently you are. Unless you'd like to take it up with the Oracle yourself?”

Rhys thins his lips. Jean laughs. “Yes, I thought not. Anyway, as I was saying, two paths.”

She beckons for him to stare at the table, with her palms laid out flat. Both are covered with script, and he doesn't understand it at all.

“It's in no language you’d know,” she explains, “And not really anything to do with you, really. Having said that, the illustrations do help a little.” She gives him a snide look. “And I figured you’d like the pictures.”

Before he can retort, she clicks her fingers and then starts talking.

“Two paths. The first one is that of your friend.” She wiggles the fingers of her left hand. On it, the outline of an intricate tree is painted. “If you choose to follow Arthur’s path, you get this tree. Huge and old, but hollow.” She taps it. “No fruit. That path has no honour, and it does little good to you. You will not be a true Oracle, but you will not be anything else, either. You act as a medium for the rest of your life, until you follow the tradition of those that follow this path, and go mad.”

“Excuse me?!”

She winces. “Ah. Yes, actually, I do apologise for that. Not tactful, given your circumstances.” She cracks the joints on one hand, absent-mindedly. “What I mean to say is that you’d end up living with the dead, unable to function in this world.” Shrugging, she continues: “And then you’d just keep living forever, we think. Death doesn't want you like that.”

Rhys stares at her.

She scoffs. “What, is it so hard to believe death has a personality? A full half of the people in this room are dead.”

Rhys keeps staring at her.

“Regardless, that’s the path Arthur wants you to choose. As far as I know, it would cause you less immediate stress. For some reason, despite his illustrious history, your friend doesn't seem to realise that sometimes it's best to tough it out.”

She snaps the palm of her left hand down, sharply clacking on the table.

“And then the other one,” she says, mildly, “Is the Oracle’s path. The Oracle wants you to take this one,” she says, as if she's confiding some great secret. “As a matter of fact, so do I, but I'm sure you knew that.”

Rhys glares at her. “You know, I'm not in the habit of letting people dictate my future.”

She groans. “Oh, grow up. I'm telling you your options, not forcing you. I’m not some shitty guidance officer. And, for that matter, I'm not Arthur, either.”

Jean slams her right hand on the table, palm up. “‘Now if you please, let me finish.”

Rhys wrinkles his nose.

“The Oracle’s path is a harder one, at first. You see things you don't want to, and are powerless to stop what you do see.” She gestures at the curve of her thumb. “The seeds are smaller, the earlier winter more harsh. But over time, the tree bears fruit. The whole world knows your name. Death will ask you to leave, and you may stay as long as you like before you decide to go with them.”

Rhys is… kind of incredulous, actually. “So, okay,” he says. “Let me get this straight. My options are: don't be an oracle, and potentially live forever, or do become an Oracle, and have to deal with prophecies every day?”

It doesn’t seem much like a choice, from where Rhys is sitting. The ‘not-an-oracle’ path also seemed to have the bonus of not involving the current oracle, and Rhys had no interest in meeting Phemonoe again.

Jean’s lips curl. “You say ‘live forever’ as if it's something positive. Eternal consciousness did not do anyone much good.”

Rhys curls his lip, too, mirroring her. She scowls at him, and he counts it as a win. “How old is Phemonoe?”

A twist at her mouth, she raises her eyebrows. “Point taken, I suppose, but really if you'd any sense of responsibility at all, you'd know the reason they are so old is because people like you keep throwing their lives away. If you did your job, they could die peacefully.”

Rhys scoffs. “What, be an Oracle forever?”

Jean wrinkles her nose. “Until you found the next Oracle, which is rather the point of the choice. You'd be The Oracle's successor, and therefore duty-bound to find your own.”

Rhys wrinkles his nose right back, and she scowls even harder. Rhys suddenly feels very much like he’s winning. “You talk about duty a lot. What if I’m not interested?”

Her eyebrows inch further up her face. “Well, then you’d be taking the other path, wouldn’t you?”

She stares at him. Rhys’d call it a staring contest, but he's not sure Jean has blinked even once the whole time she's been here. Rhys swallows and kicks at the chair legs. “What’s so good about being an Oracle?”

“Well,” she smiles, though it seems a little tight at the corners. “Other than the satisfaction of doing your duty, it provides eternal comfort and safety. The world knows your name, people provide offerings.”

Rhys coughs. “And in return for that, I have to... ‘tell’ their futures?”

Jean smiles properly this time. It looks odd on her face. “Yes, essentially! It takes practice, but I am told that once one breaks past the pain of Sight, it is more rewarding than you could possibly imagine.”

...Rhys’ throat feels tight, made of metal wire. He coughs, and squares his shoulders. “And… Is there a way to… Get the second half? The reward bit? Without having to do the ‘pain’ bit? Or the… Or the Seeing?”

Jean’s smile drops. He can’t say it’s unexpected. “Really?” She barks, mouth twisted. “You’ve spent however-many years with Arthur, of all people, and he still didn’t give you a sense of duty? I know he had a soft spot for you, but this is obscene. I knew he was a filthy liar.”

And that about does it for Rhys’ tentative patience. “Arthur’s not a liar!”

Suddenly, it’s not a conversation anymore. Jean looks triumphant, and something on her skin is ablaze. Suddenly, it feels like a war.

Jean cackles, and the fire on her back flares to the sky. Rhys feels something nipping at the corners of his shadow. “Oh, yes he is! Yes, he is! Your dear Arthur has been a soldier so many times he’s lost count! That’s why we picked him.”

Rhys wishes there were fire on his back, so he tries to shove as much as he can into his eyes instead, snarling back at her. “What?”

“He was picked!” Jean looks delighted, eyes lit up and hair ablaze. “He was chosen, child! He was picked for you. We chose for him to be sent to you.”

Rhys feels his shadow convulse, then blinks. He squares his shoulders, again, and tries so make sure he doesn’t slump over again. “Why is that important?!”

She simpers. “We thought he wanted to give you more time. But, child, he failed in his duty to prepare you.”

He blinks again, biting back his aggression. Calling him a ‘child’ in a conversation about destiny was a blatant and unsubtle attempt to goad him. He almost chokes when he realises it’s working. “Prepare me for what?”

She groans, rolling her eyes back and then perching chin on her hand. “See what I’m saying? Arthur’s going to punished for ruining you, just you wait.” She taps a sharp thumbnail to her bottom nail. “His duty was to prepare you to be a medium at the minimum. He was to aid you in your sight, not repress you. Your friend was a Seer, once upon a time. He was burnt for keeping to his faith.”

Rhys flinches and she cackles.

“Just wait until Athena hears! You see, child, you should have been a foregone conclusion. I should not be here right now. Arthur should not be speaking to the Oracle. His failure-”

“My choice, not his failure-” Rhys snaps.

“His failure,” Jean insists. “His failure has damaged you.”

“I’m not damaged.”

“Yes, you are.” She flames to the ceiling. Rhys has to squint in the face of the light. “Your Destiny has diverged. You are trying to make a choice you should not make.”

“Then it’s hardly a choice! Why give me a choice at all-?!”

“Because you must do your duty, and you must answer your responsibilities.”

Rhys crosses his arms and pulls his shoulders back. His hand hangs down in a fist.

“I. Don’t. Want. To.”

The room is filled with lightening. Jean leans over him with a snarl, hair ablaze around her face. Fire crackles around the room, between them, inside them, and when Jean snaps her hands shut, he gets only a spark of fear before his face does too. It aches and it burns and Rhys does nothing about it.

His mouth is suddenly sealed shut, and Rhys does nothing about it.

“Do you think the Oracle wanted to do it?” She screeches.

Rhys doesn’t reply. There’d be no point. His mouth is sealed shut regardless. Fire whips around the room, except it doesn’t, really. Rhys is seeing fire around the room, when there is none. Rhys is sweating anyway.

Jean sneers. “Do you think they asked?! They were given no choice.”

Rhys wants to say: ‘You aren’t really giving me much of a choice either.’ But he doesn’t. His mouth is sealed shut regardless.

“And you, little boy, think you’re bigger than them? Think you have the right to pretend that you have no duty?!” Jean spits and snarls.

Rhys wants to respond. He wants to say: ‘I don’t care about that. I don’t want it. I want Arthur back.’ But, of course, he doesn’t do that.

His mouth is sealed shut, regardless.

“Now, Rhys, listen to me. You have been lied to. The path of restraining your Sight is no choice at all. You were given a courtesy. You have thrown it in the Oracle’s face.”

Rhys… actually didn’t do that at all. What he’d done was be forced to meet Phemonoe, and then Phemonoe had done something that had made his brain hurt so bad he’d been sent to hospital, and then he’d woken up.

And then Arthur had been gone.

He shakes his head.

Jean raises her eyebrows. She doesn’t seem to be shouting anymore, but her voice is still Too Loud. “Correct me if I’m wrong, boy, but do you not reject your gifts? Do you not wish to change your path?”

Rhys scowls at her.

“You see, child,” Jean purrs, relaxing her vice grip on his shoulders and running her sharp nails against his neck, “Your Sight cannot be… switched off. Your destiny cannot be switched off.”

Her teeth look sharp.

“The Oracle can not be switched off.” Her fingernails dig into his skin, sharply, cutting into the flesh of his shoulders. “You will do your duty.”

Rhys, if he could, would say, “Or what?”

But he can’t. His mouth is sealed shut regardless.

“You will do your duty, or you will face the consequences.”

There is fire all around them. Rhys feels his face burn.

***

Waking up the next day is no different from waking up on any other day. Jean is gone, there’s shadows in his footsteps, and he feels like he’s been punched on the head. On the upside, though, his mouth works again, even if he does feel a little tentative about using it.

For the next day, Rhys says nothing at all.

 

***

He doesn’t even know where to start. He couldn’t even begin to find Phemonoe, let alone make them give Arthur back. He does know that Jean is on his heels, even if she wasn’t in the house.

So instead he just goes to school. He takes notes, learns his Spanish vocabulary. He walks back alone. When he talks to the dead hanging over derelict houses, they stop in the thresholds of the gates.

“Hello,” says one. They are the first he speaks to personally that look dead.

“Hello,” He replies. “I’m Rhys.”

The ghost beams. “Ellie!” They say, brightly, before pausing. The ghost looks confused for a second, cocking their head to the side. “You’ve never replied, before.”

Rhys blinks again. “I’ve never heard you, before.”

The ghost pats him on the shoulder, and says “Ah,” as if that explained something. Then they walk away, and leave Rhys standing at the front gate of a house that’s been sitting unlived in for over 50 years.

***

When he gets back that day, and it feels like there’s shadows walking in his footsteps, Jean is sitting in the kitchen again. She looks the same as before, like her every move is calculated.

“So,” he says. She doesn’t startle, exactly, but she looks up sharply and narrows her eyes at him. “You’re back.”

“Yes,” she says. “I’ve been told you have more questions.” She spits it like a dirty word.

Rhys takes a seat without asking. “Well, I hadn’t… expected to speak to you again, so-”

She makes a derisive noise in the back of her throat. “No. You must ask your questions now. I have more important things to be doing.”

Rhys taps his fingers on the table. “O-kay… Okay,” he says slowly. “What more important things are there to do?” It’d give him a starting point to ask something else, at least.

She smiles with her teeth on show. “There’s some… people that need dealing with. In the entire realm of ghosts and the not-quite-dead, you aren’t exactly number one priority.”

“...And… what is?”

She smiles again. Her teeth look as sharp as her nails. “Not you. To be more specific, our realm is inundated with politics right now.”

“Why?”

“The Oracle would say it is politics for the sake of politics. With mediums as currency, essentially. Your kind, are, for the most part, our way of maintaining relevance.” Her mouth twists. “Though there are… certain individuals with, ah. Different agendas.”

“Okay. Okay, um- who- who are you, exactly?”

He… probably should have asked that before.

“My name is Jean,” she says mildly. “I am one of the Oracle’s workers.”

"And... What exactly  _is_ Phemonoe?"

Her smile goes  _steely_. "You would do well to call them The Oracle, child." Rhys glares at her.

"Regardless, The Oracle is what they say they are." She gestures, simply. "They are an Oracle."

 

***

 

And after a few months of nothing, like so many other times in his life, someone else makes the first move for him.

His phone buzzes with a message from a number he doesn’t recognise.

“U need to meet w handsome jack. Ask in the city ;)”

Which, really, didn’t clear very much up at all. Not where to go, not who to ask. And Rhys- after all this, Rhys isn’t willing to risk it all on a text. Not when it might-

Well. Meeting Phemonoe had made the shadows worse, meeting Jean had made them noisy, and he’s got no idea what meeting Jack might do.

So he doesn’t go. He just… lets the text sit there. He doesn’t feel very good about it, but he’s only 16. Even if he is nearly 17.

He’s-

He’s only-

God. Rhys wants Arthur back.

***

He is exactly 17 years old- to the hour- when he gets the next text.

“Tired of waiting >:( come to Jack’s club in city- or Jack will come 2 U”

***

It’s been a long time, and Rhys is still not over losing Arthur. After his parents, after his arm, Rhys is not about to let Arthur slip through his fingers, not without a fight.

So, on a Saturday night, he sits at his desk and finishes his Spanish work. Steps out of his suburban Glenville home (he remembers, distinctly, that “there’s nothing in Glenville”) into the dark, light-spotted street. Vaguely, he thinks through his contact lenses that the shine of the lights look like halos. Then he blinks, huffs out a breath of air that comes from the very bottom of his lungs and aches, and then… He types in “Jack’s Club” on his Maps app. And then he sort of… wings it.

He hops on a bus. He codes absent mindedly on his phone for a project that he sometimes works on with Vaughn, and he knows it’s probably terrible, but there’s a churning in his gut that tells him this was going to go very very badly. He doesn’t even know what to expect. A club? Like- could be anything, fucking Golf Club for all Rhys knew. The pictures on Maps had only shown a well-furnished kitchen, of all things, but the location seemed to be in the seedier end of town. It just- it didn’t add up.

So he codes.

And then he steps off the bus and heaves another breath.

“Okay,” he mumbles. “Okay.”

***

Every step is a grounding movement. It’s the slap of his soles on tarmac and the way everything sways just a little as he swings his body forward- soothing, really.

He waves hello to some ghosts as they walk past. Maybe it- maybe it wouldn’t be so bad? After all, even if it was at the seedy end of the city, it could even be some business club. Granted, the texts hadn’t seemed very business-y, but then again, Arthur hadn’t seemed very kingly- he winces. Thinks of Arthur. Fuck. Fucking- Idiot, Arthur would never have approved of this, trekking to some dark corner in the middle of the dirtiest neighbourhood.

He keeps walking anyway, biting his lip and clenching so tight it might almost bleed, and eventually heads up at some innocuous building with-

Oh. Not so innocuous. The neon lights that say “Handsome Jack’s Night Club” blare, catching in the light in a way that seems to make the ghosts around the place stand well back. It’s almost eerie, other-worldly, sitting central across a block of apartments that were entirely unnotable. There’s faint bass from the floor, but no lights. He stops and stares and resists the urge to back away.

Suddenly, he starts. His phone shakes from his hand and he has to swipe and catch it, startled and shaking just a little from anticipation.

It’s- It’s ringing, unknown number.

Rhys never answers unknown numbers, but…

He swipes at the screen.

“Hello, Rhys,” comes a high, distinctly distinguished voice. “Please, come right in. The Boss’ll see you, now.”

“I- hello?”

“Hello, Rhys,” returns the voice, even-tempered and evenly spoken. “The Boss will see you in room 5. It’s upstairs, through the door at your left. Second on your right.”

“The boss?” Rhys says, squinting against the streetlight and neon of the club. It doesn’t seem to be very… clubby, especially since it was a Saturday night.

The even-tempered voice stops being even-tempered, just for a moment, and laughs.

“Oh, honey,” they say. “You’re about to meet Handsome Jack.”

Rhys doesn’t really know what to reply.

“Anyway,” the voice breaks the silence. Room 5. Upstairs, door to the left. It’s signposted.”

There’s another little silence then, where Rhys’ mouth open and closes uselessly.

“Good luck!” The voice says, cheerfully, and then there’s a tell-tale click and nobody to listen to anymore.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey, thanks for reading! Please leave a comment or a kudos if you can! It's what keeps me going, and might help to avoid another lull in the story.
> 
> Find me on tumblr @ verulams.tumblr.com !


	3. Jack (Ace of Wands)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Meeting Jack is- Oh, fucking hell. He’s... well. He-
> 
> Rhys takes a deep breath. Charismatic, good-looking, apparently supremely manipulative, and providing an alternative to either a slow descent into hell or the duty of being an oracle, Jack is very, very hard to resist. So...
> 
> Well. So Rhys doesn’t resist.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello! Content for this chapter includes: a wee bit of that Good Angst and hurt/comfort, actual rhack, kissing, altered states of being, visions, witch trials mentioned, fire is also frequently mentioned, use of guns, use of alcohol, and brief minor background character death

Rhys steps through the door and promptly forgets all he’s been told. It’s a dark and… oddly warm corridor, a set of stairs leading down and one leading up. It’s difficult to make out any sort of colour in the dim light, so he shines the blue light of his phone screen out into the dark. There’s sound coming from down, throbbing and deep. There’s _nothing_ coming from upstairs, and Rhys can’t remember whether he’d been told to go upstairs or down. He shakes his head and blinks, roughly. If the music hadn’t been loud enough to hear outside, it surely couldn’t be that loud? It had to be something else, someone playing music on a Bluetooth speaker or something. Rhys scratches the point where his prosthetic meets muscle. He shrugs, bites back the swelling nervousness that’s sitting beneath his belly.

He steps out, down into the dark.

Steps, one at a time, in succession. There are shadows stirring under his feet, and if he stops, he won’t be able to _move_ again, he can feel it. Sure as the sun, sure as _whatever,_ he can’t stop. It’s important that he doesn’t stop

And the steps seem longer than they should, each one a greater drop than he expects, each one feeling like a greater drop than the last. He almost staggers, almost, but he can’t do anything but keep going.

So he does.

One step, two steps, deeper.

And deeper.

And-

Eventually, there’s a door, lit by a yellow lamp bolted to the wall. He squints into the murky light. “Huh,” it was odd to go from the burning blue fluorescence of the lights outside to darkness, to pale yellow and almost _stagnant_ light. The sound of the bass is no closer or further than before, it just... Sits. It sits like a cat, maybe, purring, but with a grin so wide you can barely see the face for the teeth, or a shadow with claws too big for whatever it was cast by, creeping and stretching, grinning and _growling-_

Rhys blinks. “Stop,” he tells himself. “Shut the fuck up, brain, be quiet.”

And he steps forward, once more, stretches his legs just a little, and he nudges the door with one foot. It _bursts_ open, suddenly, as if he’s forced it. He’s hit with a wall of noise, pounding bass, pounding _power,_ and suddenly he’s face to face with a crowd of- people? Souls? Doesn’t matter, really, a hand reaches out and suddenly it’s not a crowd, it’s a part of him, yet another missing limb but this one he knows he’s going to _miss_ -

Thunder, thunder, god it’s- it’s _everything,_ synapse firing and neurones buzzing, Rhys jumps and yells and screams as the others do, body against body, not-body against not-body. Sheer power pushed up tight to sheer power, Rhys blinks and gasps and this is- well. What the fuck was _this,_ he doesn’t have time to think, because everything is so! Everything is so _happening_ , it hits him again and again and again and threads its way through his skull, sweet and soft and jagged at the same time.

It hits at his eardrums in time with his heartbeat and he feels it speed up, as his heart does, feels it wind its way through his whatever the fuck, his aorta and his vena cava and his arteries, all in his bloodstream, brain spinning and head tilting off to one side-

Someone’s pushing his head up, yelling at him, grasping fingers at his shirt-

Something rips, and Rhys blinks.

Suddenly, as soon as it began, he’s being dragged out of the pit of-

The pit of-

He’s. He’s not sure _what_ that was, only that it was good and to his _extreme_ embarrassment, there is a stiffness in his underwear that hadn’t been there before.

“Hey, kid,” says a man. He is sitting on the stairs, legs jutting out at right-angles, spread. He smiles widely, face almost curled up at the edges. Rhys blinks, tries to focus.

“What?” Rhys slurs. His brain is fuzzy, edged with something softer than it should be.

“Y’alright?” He asks, but Rhys doesn’t register anything other than his broad shoulders or his perfect teeth. His skin seems over bright around _lines,_ traced over his forehead and around the edges of his chin. His- Rhys is sloppy, can _barely_ control his mouth let alone his eyes, and he-

He’s reasonably ashamed to drag his eyes away from the man’s crotch, because that would mean admitting to himself that his eyes had been there _in the first place._

The man must follow his gaze, because he laughs deeply, rumbling and rough. “Yeah,” he says. “Y’alright.” He glances over his shoulder. “Hey, Lizé! Look after the, uh. _Guest._ ” He smiles again, and stands up, folding himself around a young, glowing woman. She takes his place, stood in front of Rhys. She, however, is not smiling. Distantly, the man calls down the stairs:

“Don’t let him go back in there! It was hot, but like. Who needs that hassle?”

And he’s not _100%_ embarrassed to say he twinges in his pants a little at the ‘hot’ comment, but he is at least 80% embarrassed. Significantly so.

The woman- Lizé, he had called her- does not smile, but something in her eyes makes him blush, warm and hot under the collar.

He pauses. “Wait,” he says, clearing his throat. He stares at her, dimly lit corridor seeming to swallow up the light. “I- You’re a ghost?”

She cocks a hip. “Yes,” she says.

“But- how can he talk to you? He was alive.”

She laughs. “Jeeze, Jean wasn’t kidding when she said Arthur didn’t tell you much about us! Jack’s most  _definitely_ dead, sweetheart. Very dead. More dead than plenty of other dead people.” 

He blinks.

“You're the person that was on the phone!" He blinks again. "That was- That was _Handsome Jack?_ ”

 

***

 

She leads him up the stairs, refuses to answer any of his questions, and frowns a lot. As he sits in the lobby, upstairs and woozy from more than just the climb, she sits in the corner and faces pointedly away from him,

 The sound of sharpening metal is the only noise that seems to stick, she shrugs off his questions with _ease,_ and he has absolutely _no_ idea what he’s meant to be doing, so he taps at his phone and tries to breathe deeply.

 He tries not to let the metal screech get to him.

 

***

 

Suddenly, a door opens and a booming voice spills out. “Hey! Lizé! if that's the medium I hear, y'all better let him in like right now. It's gonna be busy tonight? I'm gonna need you to hurry it up, I've got clients.”

 Rhys blinks. He hadn’t been making any noise.

 Lizé stands up, and whatever it was she’d been sharpening seems to fade into nothingness. She ushers him in through the door, trying to push him. She fails, and her hand passes through his shoulder. He hurries along anyway, nearly tripping on the upholstery.

 A huge room, and he’s guided to one corner of it, upholstered to look like- a kitchen? Or a set of a kitchen, a facsimile. Regardless, He’s sat down on a chair as the other man lounges. The swivel chair looks extremely out of place in the rest of the scene, but if anyone but Rhys notices, they don’t say anything.  
  
“Hey, kid!” Jack says- if it _was_ Handsome Jack, and this wasn’t just a typical ghost trying to get the better of him- as he swings around in his chair.  “Damn,” He whistles, looking Rhys up and down. Eyes wide, it’s all Rhys can do to stare at him. “I've heard a _lot_ about you.”   
  
“Sorry, just- who are you?”   
  
He sips at a drink, balancing the glass almost daintily against firstthe arm of his chair and then the counter he’s perched next to, and he whistles. “Wow. Nice. I'm gonna pretend you didn't say that and just do my opening spiel instead, 'Kay?” Rhys’ mouth open and closes uselessly. “Good,” he says.

  
“So, pretty much, in your story, I'm like. Almost literally the Devil’s advocate-.” The man opens his mouth to speak, then stops and frowns. “I’m Jack, by the way. Handsome Jack.”

 

Rhys opens his mouth-

 

“No, shush.” Jack clicks his tongue as Rhys snaps his mouth shut. “No talky. I know Arthur likes to raise mediums mouthy, and that's cool, but if I'm talking, you shut up. Clear?”  
  
Rhys almost wants to say yes out loud. Something about the noise of sharpening metal- knives, maybe?- makes him just nod instead.   
  
“Good!” He claps and smiles wide. “Progress already! Ah, I knew it wasn't as bad as Phi-Phi made out. Anyway! So, I'm your devil. Like, I sit on your shoulder and tell you to do cool and fun stuff, where Phi sits on your shoulder and tells you to become like, an oracle monk or something. And Arthur is also there. He mostly just wants you to be lazy, though, so whatever.” He waves a hand.   
  
He takes a long drink of whatever it was that's colouring his glass bring orange and pink. "Yeah, so like. The plan would pretty much be for all of us to agree that Phi-Phi is a dick and frick them. And then you'd probably take up a job offer here. But that's not so important. Anyway! There you go, now you know.”

Rhys blinks.

“What?”

“I said, didn’t I? We’re gonna tell Phi to frick off, yeah? Then we’re gonna rule the world or whatever. Or I’ll rule the world. You’ll also be there, I guess. You with me?”

Rhys looks desperately at Lizé over on the other side of the room, and then back at Jack. “ _No?”_

Jack stands and plants his hands heavily on Rhys’ shoulders, bodily wheeling him towards a small chair. “Yeah, sure you are. Now, sit there and look young and not-murderous. I know you want your dad back, but if you ruin my deal, I'm gonna put you several further planes into death than he'd even think to look!

Suddenly, the woman- Lizé, she has some glasses and some rope and-

“Kid,” she says, staring down at him. She's very tall, which is saying something because Rhys is _not short._

“Gonna need you to slip these on and act like… I dunno. Jack, what do you want him to act like?”

Rhys swings his head over to Jack as he downs the last of drink and then smooths down the front of his jacket. He pours himself another drink before he answers, taking his time. 

It seems to Rhys that there has  _never_ been a room with such a power imbalance.

Eventually, Jack looks over, scowling.

  
“I already said. Young. Not murderous. Innocent, etc. Not hard, kid doesn't look like he could tell a fly to fuck off.” 

If Lizé wants to laugh, she doesn't show it on her face. Instead, she deftly slips some sunglasses onto his face and then pauses, says, “You're either going to hate this, or be really into it.” She shrugs. “Either way, shut up and we’ll be golden.”

She's not gentle about it, but Rhys doesn't protest as she ties him (loosely) to his chair.

 He thinks that these people could probably kill him if they wanted to. He gets the feeling that they might want to if he steps out of line.

 He's got a good self-preservation instinct for someone that seemed contractually obligated to get himself into stupid shit.

 He heaves a breath as there's a knock on the door and Lizé steps away. God. Arthur would be _so mad_ at him.

 Then, through the doors that Rhys had walked through himself not too long ago, comes three men in suits.

 They look _terrifying_ , steel stares and auras bristling with something _alive,_ shadows articulated with bone and gristle.

 Then again, Rhys has been having trouble with his sight recently. Was it his sight or his Sight? It was… getting harder to tell. He tries hard not to think of Jean, and he sighs quietly.

 At the quiet exhale of breath, there's a _shift_ in the room and every single person turns to look at him. Except for Jack, who, in a few long strides, is at his shoulder. Very, very gently, he leans over to Rhys’ ear. Then, in clear and crystalline booming tones, he says: “Shut up, kid, or you'll go the same way as your dear old dad.”

 It might be for show.

 His breath catches in his throat anyway.

 Jack slaps his cheek twice, almost _gently._ “Are we _clear?”_

  _“Y-”_ Rhys winces. Arthur would be so, _so_ disappointed right now. “Yes sir,” he says, quickly. It seems like the right thing to say because Jack smiles and ruffles his hair.

 “Good boy.”

 And- oh, no…

 Rhys mentally slaps himself, and very pointedly doesn't think “that's hot.” He feels like somehow, they'd know.

 Within seconds, Jack is at the other end of the room again, “Welcome, gentlemen,” claps his hands once, twice, the lights _blare on._

  _Suddenly there's a thousand spirits, moaning and groaning with the weight of it all_ , the weight of _something_ and he knows instinctively, he knows it in his bones that souls at peace should never be brought this _close_ , this close to this world, and he-

 The shadows shriek around him and retract; they wail and hide under his chair, clinging to him.

 Over the roar, Jack shouts. “I’m sure you thought you came here for _business,”_ he yells. “I'm sure you thought you came for a _good deal.”_ Rhys can't see his face. He's busy staring pointedly downwards, lips bitten to shreds, maybe bitten to blood, but he can't tell because it's all thrumming in his head and outside it, with shadows cowering beneath him and a roaring light around him, Rhys can't help but wonder if this is what it was _like_ to be an Oracle.

 He blinks when Jack keeps talking, and is somehow shocked when he feels tears drop down his face into his lap.

 “I'm sure you _thought a lot of things, gentlemen,_ but one of you hasn't kept to the deal! One of you, one, of, you, broke your deal! With Handsome goddamn Jack!”

 Maybe Jack’s not shouting.

Maybe Rhys was the only one who could hear the yelling. Maybe Rhys was the only one who could see the souls stretching the seams of the air.

 Maybe-

 Another set of tears pour down his face, and one of the men runs for the door.

 He is unsurprised when it slams shut, the weight of the air forcing it together again.

 Maybe, though, to the men, it seemed as though it slammed shut of its own accord.

 A soul whips fast past his face, and he winces. This time he sobs, just a little, and across the room Jack cackles.

 “Nice try running, fucker, I'm _God! Can’t run from god, asshole_ ,”

 And then, as Rhys looks up, Jack whips his gun out of a holster and shoots him in the head.

 

***

 

A little while away, two women raise their heads.

 “What the fuck was _that_?” says one.

 “No idea,” says the other. One presses her fingers to the brim of her hat, and then to her sister’s shoulder.

 “Hey,” she says, when the second woman shifts, uneasy. “Wasn’t the police, was it? There’s no problem unless we make it one.”

 She bites her lip, unconvinced. “Yeah,” she says. “Yeah, sure.”

 

***

 

A little while later, the only sound in the room is the chattering of Rhys’ teeth.

“Hey Lizé, can you shut that door, please? Thanks, babes.” He grins widely, and Rhys is… goddamn it, he’s just _staring,_ eyes wide as they’ve ever been and brain still overloaded.   
  
“Okay Rhys,” he smiles widely, spectre-glow clinging tight to his skin. Rhys hadn’t even noticed him glowing, before. “I'm not going to lie. Baby time is over.”   
  
Rhys bites the inside of his cheek and kind of wonders if the business exchange where he just shot someone's head off counted as baby time.   
  
“You've got, like. What. A year to make. Final decision? But you know it's never too early for pre-nups!” He saunters over to his swivel chair and relaxes into it with a deep noise. He scoots over, and Rhys winces at the sound the wheels make on the floor. “So,” he says, and waits for Rhys to says something

When it’s all Rhys can do to open his mouth noiselessly, watching Jack’s glow slowly, ever so slowly, retract into his skin, the man smiles and leans forward, bracing his elbows on his knees.  “So,” he repeats. “Pretty much, I care very very deeply for your well-being. I don’t _need_ you for this to work, but it’s gonna go _so_ much smoother with you around. What I want is for you to tell Phemonoe to frick off five ways to Sunday, then I want to step into the power vacuum once they all up and fall apart, and then I want to have you on my side. And then I win.” He claps his hands, lounging in his seat.  Y’see?” He waves his hands, mimics pulling a party streamer. Rhys is… When Arthur had talked about Jack being the villain, he hadn’t…

He hadn’t expected Jack to be so…

Jack smiles. _Charismatic._   
  
“It's like- oh. What's it like... Corporate takeover. But bigger. Imagine if Apple bought out God. That's me. I'm doing that.”   
  
Rhys is going to admit it. He's impressed, even if he hadn’t been listening to most of it. He winces, at that, because he _should_ have been paying attention. He bites his lip again, tapping one foot against the tiled floor. "And you... you're apple or God, in that analogy?"   
  
Jack throws his hands up in the air. "That's the best bit!” He crows. “I'm both! And also, of course, you're there. I'll need you around, even if you don't do any Seeing, you know?"   
  
Rhys frowns. "Why would I be there?" If his options had been to become an Oracle or _not_ become an Oracle, it didn’t follow that he’d be _useful_ . And even if he _was_ useful, did he want to spend more time with ghosts? Even if they were… Like Jack?   
  
Jack looks kind of incredulous. "Dude, really?” Rhys shocks back to paying attention. “You're a live Person that can see dead people. Even if you weren't all prophesied and stuff, you'd be an excellent sleeper agent. Gotta use those human resources, you know?”   
  
“Like, take Lizé over there,” says Jack. Lizé glances up from the sound of sharpening metal. “She was working for some diplomat when she was alive. But, 'course, part of all of the top secret bodyguard stuff is having no personal relationships, right? But she totally had unfinished business. And she was just gonna languish in her graveyard forever, you know? So I'm like, hey Lizé. I'll kill your politician for you if you work for me. And Lizé’s like, ‘sure! I'm a reasonable individual who knows when I'm getting a good deal!’”   
  
Rhys quickly puts together a list of questions in his head, and then coughs. “So, those businesspeople... They were alive. Right?” They had certainly looked alive, no spectral glow clinging to them. But then he’d been wearing sunglasses. He frowns. He hadn’t asked _why_ he’d been wearing sunglasses, either. He adds that to his list.   
  
Jack grins widely. "Yu-huh, they were alive"   
  
“And you're…” Rhys squints at Jack. The glow that was so typical of the dead was barely there, a whisper. “Dead?”   
  
“Mm-hmm, yup!”   
  
“And... Being a medium is rare." He doesn’t say Oracle because _fuck that,_ but he’s willing to admit that he’s definitely some kind of seer. There were too many ghosts around for him to be anything else.   
  
Jack nods. "Go on," he says.   
  
“Then-how did?!”

Jack smiles wide, Cheshire grin and wicked, perfect teeth. “How did _what?_ ”

“ _How_ did they see you? If you’re dead, and they weren’t mediums, how did that- How did you _shoot_ one?”   
  
Jack laughs. “It’s my _favourite_ party trick, right. Like- you probably didn't see it because if all the light and shit, and,” He snaps his fingers. “Ah, and those glasses, but those business dudes saw me with like, a reverse halo.”

Rhys blinks.

“What does… what does that even mean?”

“It means they could see me, and it means they could see me because of how _awesome_ I am. I am _so_ good at pressing those death-life boundaries.” He reclines in his seat, lounging. “Honestly I'm so impressed with me, making that happen. I love it when that shit happens IRL. Like, if that was in a movie, I’d probably say the symbolism was ham-fisted. You know? Ahh," he shakes his head, grabbing his drink from the counter and drinking. "God,” he says, between gulps. “I forgot how much I loved my plans."   
  
Rhys clears his throat. "Um, Mister..." He says, angling for some kind of surname, any kind of title.   
  
He's expecting the man to fill in the gaps. He doesn't, though, just stares at him indulgently.   
  
"Sir." Jack grins widely. "How exactly are you going to... Do, your plan?"   
  
Jack grins. "It's a scam. I get a whole host of seers together and have them fake prophecy. I become the new Phi Phi, I control the, uh. Ethereal plane. It's not very me, given that there's only like, some death involved, but eh, you know. Deadlines."   
  
Rhys raises an eyebrow. "There's a deadline on buying out gods?"   
  
Jack’s expression drops. "You must make your choice before you are 20. That's the deadline."

 “Oh,” he says. He feels suddenly very old. How many people his age felt as old as he did, when people kept giving him prophecies and ghosts kept getting involved in his life?

 “Okay then, Rhysie,” Jack’s like… Warm, somehow. Too warm, cloying. Like he’s been sitting out too late at night, and come in from the cold to a heated building, and he’s just something _over-warm._ God knows what that _meant._ His brain hurts. He’s tired. “What do you want?”   
  
Rhys makes a soft noise and looks down.

 

“Hey. Rhys. _Hey,”_ he says, waving a hand in front of his face. Rhys, suddenly back in the moment, looks at him. “What do you want?”

 

Rhys hums. “I want…” He swallows, bites at his lip again. “To choose my own destiny.”   
  
Jack stares at him. “Uh…. huh. Okay. Let's try that again. Be more specific, kid, I’m basically on a budget here.”   
  
“I want... To not have anyone else pick where my life goes?” Rhys tries.   
  
He sighs. He sounds _bored._  “Okay. Once more.”   
  
“I…”   
  
“Okay. Okay! I have an idea alright, so- we're gonna do this like one of those bullshitty group therapy things. Like, where they all sit in a circle and tell each other shit. Lizé!”   
  
She looks up, and the sound of metal stops sharply. "Yes?"   
  
Rhys startles. He hadn’t realised she’d still been sharpening.   
  
Lizé sighs. The metal shrill resumes. "My name is Lizé. I want to stay alive. When I first came to Jack I said I wanted my former employers head on a platter."   
  
“Good! See, Lizé gets it. Good job Lizé." His gaze spotlights on Rhys. "I'm Jack. I like money and power. That's my Modus Operandi."   
  
Rhys squints. "That's... Not a very clear goal."   
  
"Uh, yes it is. Don't be a negative nancy. It doesn't make for good entertainment. Now, you.” He gestures, flicks his fingers at Rhys.   
  
“Um.” He bites his lip. “I’m Rhys? I'd like... To make sure Arthur's safe.” He thinks briefly of Phemonoe and the fire in his head, and shivers.   
  
Jack twists his hands about and makes a noise of non-committance. “I meeaaaan... That's a start.” He clicks his tongue. “Definitely a _start._ Once more, though.” He leans over the table. “With _feeling_ .”   
  
“I- okay.” He frowns, concentrates. “I'm Rhys. I want Phemonoe to not be able to trap-” He pauses, then rephrases. “Fuck with people in my kitchen. Or. Any kitchen, I guess.”

  
Jack sighs. “Look, kid, work with me. Give me some more _spite_ .” Rhys glances over at Lize, where she’s still sharpening… knives? Swords, even? Jack continues. “The Oracle took away your dad and then set you on _fire_ . I wanna hear some anger, here, kid.”   
  
And, well. "They- they took my parents?!?"   
  
Jack shrugs. "Maybe. They've done it before. Did it with your dad."   
  
"Wh- what?"   
  
Jack sighs at him, picking up his glass. "Your dad. Arthur."   
  
"Arthur's not my-" It’s kind of a lie, the moment he feels it coming out of his mouth he restrains a wince.   
  
"Yes, he is,” Jack scoffs. “Don't lie. And, for what it's worth, Phemonoe actually set him _literally,”_ Jack swallows on the emphasis almost, maybe to make it even more pronounced. Like he’s calculating his words. Like he’s calculating his breath _between_ the words. “ _Lit-er-all-y_ on _fire_ at one point. He totally died.” Nonchalant, Jack picks up his glass from the table and clacks a fingernail against it.

 

The sound rings in Rhys’ ears.  
  
“The-” Wait. Arthur had said. He’d _mentioned,_ even _Jean_ had said. “...The witch trials?   
  
“Well.” Jack’s mouth twists as he bites into the lime perched on his drink. “Yeah, kinda. That one was messy, too, if I remember right. He cried."

 

If Jack’s face twists _up_ , just a little, at the corners, Rhys doesn’t notice.

 

He’d been told before, he can… he can _feel_ it, but he hadn’t-   
  
“Phemonoe killed Arthur?”   
  
“Eh,” Jack returns. “He'd died a few times already, by that point.”   
  
Rhys’ mouth opens and shuts. He-

“Phemonoe-”

Jack is staring at him, eyes alight with something, tremendous and flashing with what could be interest but could be something else entirely.

“Phemonoe _burned Arthur alive_ ?!”   
  
Jack smiles at him, grimly. If there’s something else to it, Rhys doesn’t notice. "Fraid so.  People tell me I've got like, a God-Complex or some shit, right? But you look at people like Phi, who burn people as tests of fuckin’ _fate_... It's like, holy shit, you know?"

Jack- Rhys notices absently that Jack is _calculating,_ cold and harsh at the edges of a warm and burning core. Dangerous. Every bit of him is telling him that he’s making a deal with a devil here, and possibly a literal one. Not- not as bad as Phemonoe though. That- that _thing,_ whatever they were, Oracle or god or ghost or _whatever,_ was _bad._ A _bad_ thing, a _bad_ person, a solid not-good that Rhys can add to his list of not-goods. Jack, at least, had not set him on fire. Or Arthur on fire for that matter, nobody had been set on fire at all since he’d arrived.   
  
“Now, Rhys,” He places his cocktail down on the table with something like precision and something like imprecision, and it-

Rhys can’t shake the fact that when the man in front of him drops his glass to the table and it wobbles from side to side, that it’s _calculated._

“Rhys. Yoo-hoo,” Jack waves his fingers in front Rhys and then grins when Rhys blinks back to the present. “What is it that you want?”

He thinks of demons, lesser and greater, and the fact that he’s missing his- fuck it, he’s missing his _dad,_ Arthur was his dad, and Phemonoe had taken him, and more than that Phemonoe had come into his kitchen and _set him on fire._

And there must be something of it reflected on his face, the way his blood aches and his brain is shouting and his soul is telling him to just commit already, because Jack is smiling.

“I'm Rhys. And I want Phemonoe to get fucked.”

 

“Mm!” says Jack, through a mouth of wine. He’s drinking from another glass now, and it certainly looks like wine, a jarring difference from the pink drink he’d had before. “Good!” He exclaims, as he swallows. “That’s a good one, good!” 

“Mm,” he takes another gulp of wine. “Yeah, that’s _definitely_ along the right lines. We’ll go with that, play it by ear,” he twists a hand around in the air. “You know how these things go. Anyway, we’ve got two possible plans! We either find the other seers and play the long con, or we… do the other thing.”

Rhys blinks. “Other thing?” 

“The game we play is one of _power._ ” Jack says, then blinks. “Jeeze, that sounds ominous, huh?  I mean…” he clicks his tongue, swaying just a bit in his stance. “It _is,_ ominous I mean. Definitely ominous.” Rhys frowns.

“What do you mean, the other thing?”

“I’m getting to that, so,” he says, smiles a cat smile and cracks his back in a stretch. “We’re gonna make you _big,_ kid. You know that whole fire shtick? Like that. But it’ll feel… well. You wanna lil’ demonstration?”

Carefully,  hesitantly, Rhys nods his head. He’s sat in front of a mirror, on a plush yellow chair. It’s gaudy but comfortable. He-

He knows it’s bad, but he’s watching the mirror instead of Jack when it happens. On the one hand, it means he can’t see Jack’s face. He doesn’t- he’s not entirely _comfortable_ with Jack, the way his smiles are sometimes triple-layered and the way his very presence seems to trigger some alarm bells. On the other hand, he gets to see exactly what he _does._

If Jack’s smiling, Rhys can’t see it, but what he _can_ see is the way Jack’s long fingers gently trace his temple, over his brow bone to the divot behind the edges of his eyes.

He can see the way Jack gently, ever so gently, seems to put his fingers into _place,_ for some specific reason. Rhys can’t help but think that it might be for some specific _ritual-_

“Jack, maybe-”

“Shh,” murmurs Jack, and then he _plunges his fingers into Rhys’ skull._

 

_Thrumming everything,_ the bass from downstairs funnelled into his skull, breathing deeply, brain scattered as one thing becomes another thing becomes another, power- _loose,_ decadent and indulgent and _sleek_ , oil on water, something in him rising as something that is _not_ him sinks down-

“Oh,” says his mouth, in a voice that’s not his own, “ _Wow,”_ and then there’s _joy,_ sensation, and by the time he realises what’s happening there’s something settling warm in his tummy, a little bit of calm in the bottom of a maelstrom of whatever this was.

He breathes, one, two, thinks about- nothing, he thinks about nothing, head too full of something to do anything, brain loud and heart screeching, he! He’s!

There’s-

Oh _god,_ this is _something_ , he’s breathing heavy and his legs are splayed and he’s flush with the chair itself, body bent around it and his head is, when he takes a glance at the mirror, thrown back, face flushed, brain spinning-

He sighs and it’s a _groan,_ he sparks and shudders as something like a glow sits around him, something but not quite, gone again in an instance, and Rhys stretches backwards in a sense of _one-ness_ that he’s not felt, not ever, not until this very moment where-

Suddenly it’s over and Jack is pulling his hand away and it’s all Rhys can do to follow his fingers up, up to where he’s standing and breathlessly flop into his arms, mouth on mouth and body on body which-

He blinks, fuzzily.

He was kissing a dead man.

Still, Jack kisses back, warm and wet at his tongue and nipping gently at his lips, and it’s all Rhys can do to groan and, when the kiss finally ends, flop back down into the chair.

“Oh…” he says, and this time he says it with a voice that’s his own. “ _Wow._ ”

Jack smiles wide, and if there’s a little tic at the corner where it’s maybe not genuine, Rhys doesn’t notice.

Rhys sits sloppy in his chair and breathes, slowly and surely and deeply. More gracefully than should be possible for a man of Jack’s stature, he crouches in front of Rhys, hands on his knees and body gentle.

“Now the fun’s over, how about we get you back in contact with your old dad, huh?”

“I-” Rhys blinks, shakes his head. “ _Yes,_ but I- I have _questions._ ”

Jack steps back, apparently put off. “Huh,” he says, sourly. “Well, there’s not gonna be another moment quite so good like, ever, now, so you might as well.”

Rhys bites his lip as Jack pushes himself up into his own chair. “Go on,” he says, gesturing. “You got questions, I got answers.”

“I-”

_“Chop-chop,”_ he says, smiling in a way that seems _predatory._

“What’s the light?” Rhys bursts out, and he almost feels like he needs to gasp for breath.

“It’s… good question, by the way, well done. None of that: ‘Are you evil?’ stuff for you, right?” He smiles, and Rhys bites back his next question, which would have asked if Jack was to be trusted. It seems, in hindsight, far too close to asking if Jack was evil.

“Anyway. It’s...  power,” says Jack, after taking a moment. “Souls, power, the inherent energy present in all living things. Etcetera, blah blah, whatever. It’s just power, that’s what’s important.”

Rhys’ mouth opens and closes. “Okay,” he says, after a second. “And how come you don’t glow that much?”

“Because I’m Handsome _goddamn_ Jack is why.”

Rhys looks at him blankly.

“Wow. Tough crowd. Anyway, nah, it’s because I put a lot of effort into being as… corporeal as possible. It means that normal people,” he gestures. “You know, _normal people,_ can see me.”

Rhys blinks. “And… how does that work? Scientifically, I mean?”

Jack squints at him. “Kid, you’re talking to a real, walking, bona fide dead person, and you want to talk _science_? You’re in the wrong business.”

“There- okay,” he cuts himself off. “Not scientifically, then. What did you _do?_ ”

“Good question.” Jack smiles. “And I’ll pass on it, for now.”

Rhys frowns. “Why, though? Why can’t you tell me?”

He raises an eyebrow in response. “Not to be cryptic and whatever, but because of the _future_ ,” he wiggles his fingers, stands up again.

 “Come on kid, quickly now. We’re running out of time.”

 “For what?”

 “You’ll see. Last question?”

 He sits in silence for just long enough for Jack to tap his foot on the floor.

 “Why me?”

 It’s only because Rhys is staring so intently at Jack that he can see his face soften, just a tiny bit. “Well, you could think of it as a gift, kid, now you can-”

 “No, no. I don’t mean- I’m not trying to get you to be sympathetic,” though that was a lie, because he _was_ trying to get Jack’s sympathy, but that hadn’t been what he’d meant. “Do you _know_ why I was chosen?”

 “You weren’t,” says Jack. He breathes in swiftly through his teeth, then sighs. “Yeah, it’s always been this way. You were always the next oracle, no matter who you were.”

 “What?” Rhys squints at him. “That doesn’t make any _sense-”_

 Jack claps, interrupting. “Yeah, yeah, I know, it’s… well, it’s not sensible, that’s for damn sure, kid. Anyway, we got business.”

 He holds out his hand, and it’s- well, it’s _bright,_ on _fire_ almost, dripping with light and phasing between one space and another.

 “How about we get you back in touch with your dear old dad, huh?”

 Rhys’ eyes widen, suddenly sitting bolt upright, and Jack nods at his hand. “Go on, take it.” And when Rhys’ hand is already halfway across the space, out of the corner of his mouth, he says: “This might hurt,”

 

And suddenly Rhys is screaming, and he’s not sat in a chair at all, bursting through some limit he hadn’t known existed-

 

***

 

-and there, on the plateau of some great cliff, with roaring sea beneath, he’s suddenly seeing a bird’s eye view of someone that is _clearly_ Arthur, and his heart does a little thing in his chest. From where his view of the cliff ends, a woman shifts, and his vision zeroes in. _Jean._ He’d snarl, if he had a face, but he doesn’t, for some reason.

 He doesn’t even have a body.

 There is a chair, sat in the middle of the plateau, and every so often a figure shifts in an out of view. They are blue, static, _moving,_ fundamentally untied to a single spot in the way the others seem to be, and Rhys recognises them as Phemonoe. They are talking, though he cannot hear the words just yet. Arthur’s head is firmly bent to the floor, Jean’s stuck up high, and Phemonoe’s enrobed.

 He drifts lower, and he can hear snippets.

 “Given the high levels of failure-” Jean says, and it sounds as if her voice has bad signal. “We-- Understandable -- Risk --”

 Arthur says nothing, though Jean glances at him. His hands are clasped behind his back, head bowed.

 “Cannot-- Trusted--” she says, tinny as if through some old speaker.

 Suddenly, Phemonoe’s head whips up.

 

“ _Jack,”_ they say.

 Arthur glances at Jean, but she isn’t looking and _immediately_ snaps to attention, back straight and stance well-wrought.

 “Jack, _child,_ ”

 Suddenly, the sky thunders and the sea roars up the edge of the cliff. “ _You have… you have been told…_ ”

 Static shock clings to his non-existent skin, and he breathes deeply, just once. Suddenly, Phemonoe is _staring in his dimension and his mouth is alight, like he’s swallowed fire and ice and it burns_ -

 

“ _Jack,”_ they screech. There is lightening cracking down in barrages. “You are _breaking the rules._ ”

 

A howl.

 

***

 

It is a coincidence that, many dimensions away, a young man walks past an abandoned building and hears yelling. The windows are open, and a change in the song playing from his phone makes for a jarring gap in noise. His concentration wanders as it takes _too long_ to play the next song, as he walks to the bus stop in subdued steps, head down. He’s just out of the seediest part of town when he stops dead, hears crashing, raised voices- and then a distinctly familiar, distinctly male voice says,

 “ _Jack,_ ” it hollers. “ _You are breaking the rules,”_

The young man looks up, aghast, and almost without thinking, says: “What the fuck?”

A pause.

The music starts, and his tongue catches in his mouth as he says, “ _Rhys?!”_

 

_***_

 

Back in hell or heaven or whatever the hell this was, he’s not sure, his head hurts and his consciousness seems to be spilling out over the sides of his head,  sloppy and sharp at the same time. He’s- jagged, feels jagged, feels _wrong._  He lets out an anguished noise and he feels Jack’s grip tighten on a hand he’d forgotten he _had_ -

Arthur whips his head up, and suddenly the world narrows down to pinpricks of light. “ _Rhys?”_ he says, and he can hear it clearly. He can _hear_ as Jean says, “I’ll speak to Jack, Oracle,” can _somehow_ hear as Phemonoe nods their assent, and can certainly hear a phone clatters to the ground as Jean disappears.

“What have you _done to him?_ ” demands Arthur, stance solid and flaring from shadow upwards. He glares at Phemonoe’s static, glowering, light licking up his back and extending into the sky. Where he had been solid, light begins to flick at his bones, and Rhys can very abruptly see that Arthur is dead and so was everyone he spoke to these days, god fucking damn it, and the world is spinning as Arthur snarls, takes something huge from his back and brandishes it, and something switches, slips, moves, suddenly Arthur grasps at the floor and picks something up and then-

The world flickers back and forth and suddenly, much less pinpricks of sight, Rhys can see Phemonoe _exactly._

He-

His eyes hurt.

He whimpers, curls into a ball, and-

  


***

 

Suddenly, Rhys is back in the kitchen. He shakes.

“ _Fuck you!”_ He spits at Jack, hand released and bodies _separate. “_ Don’t- _Don’t!”_

Jack, in a gesture that doesn’t- it doesn’t _follow,_ because Jack’s not… Jack’s not _Arthur,_ they don’t _know_ each other. But Jack holds up his hands like he’s calming some spooked long-limbed horse, and Rhys- he feels like his body is flashing back and forth, like he’s as vague as Phemonoe, like the shadows that clung to his brain, and-

“I _fucking-”_ howls Rhys. His voice breaks. “ _WHY!_ Why is it-?! Why is it _always me?!_ ” He sobs.

“It’s not,” says Jack.

“ _Yes, it is!”_ He screeches, body shooting back and forth. Rhys pulls his knees up, clutches his arms around and buries wide open eyes in the gap between them. Jack sighs, and in the corner of his eye Rhys sees him glancing over his shoulder to the mirror behind him.

 “You know what?” He says, mouth moving too slowly for Rhys’ eyes. “It _is,_ ” he rumbles. “It _is_ always you,” He flexes and stretches and the shadows strain beneath their combined weight. “And not to push my agenda here,”

Rhys’ teeth chatter.

“But to _totally_ push my agenda,” Jack finishes. “Whose fault is that?”

For a split second, he thinks, ‘me. Oh god, me, it’s my fault.’ But he catches a glimpse, out of the corner of his eye, of a flash of shimmering blue.

His teeth stop chattering, his bones stop rattling, his brain stops crackling, and he is suddenly steel.

He looks up, stretches his legs back down, at the same time as Jack places his hands on Rhys’ shoulders.

“ _Phemonoe,_ ” they say, together, and Jack claps his shoulder, roughly. He can see intricately the oddly spectral pattern of lines on his skin.

“You’re a good kid,” says Jack, then visibly considers something.

 

 “Now let’s see what we can’t do about getting your dad back.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading!! Please leave a comment, my friends, I am really interested to hear which bits of this is working! c:

**Author's Note:**

> I hope you enjoyed!! You can find me [here](http://www.verulams.tumblr.com).


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